UPWARD 



H~ 



suj.cL/ 



Jfrom Sin, Cjragjr §xm, k (Skjr. 



"FOR ME TO LIVE IS CHRIST AND TO DIE IS GAIN." 



Rev. B. B. HOTCHK1N. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

PRESBYTERIAN PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, 

1334 CHESTNUT STREET. 

NEW YORK : A. D. F. RANDOLPH, 770 BROADWAY. 



Ml- 



£V 



e^ 



Hi 



Entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

WM. L. HILDEBURN, Treasurer, 

in trust for the 

PRESBYTERIAN PUBLICATION COMMITTEE, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District of 
Pennsylvania. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This little book is meant to reflect the dealings of 
God with the heart of his child ; in other words, to 
be a book of Christian experience. 

The holy activities of the age will never displace 
this truth, that the Christian draws his abiding com- 
forts from the religion of his heart. To assure him- 
self of those comforts, he needs often to turn aside 
from the sympathetic influences of the outward reli- 
gious movements, and find himself alone with God. 
There he may ask himself how much of what he calls 
his religion is religion; how much of it is born of 
the people, and how much of God; how much would 
abide, and how much perish, with the dying away of 
the public stir. In this dealing with the vitalities 
of religion there is found the strongest incitement to 
its public activities, and the true secret of patient 
perseverance in such activities. 

So far as the subject of these pages is concerned, 
no apology is needed. Reasons enough exist why 
Christian experience should remain one of the 
standing topics of religious literature. 



CONTENTS. 



i. 

PAGE 

Reconciliation with Gob. First— The Longing 9 



II. 



Reconciliation with God. Second — The Accom- 
plishment 28 



in. 

Conscience. First — At War 42 

IV. 

Conscience. Second — At Peace 50 

1» 5 



6 CONTENTS. 

V. 

PAGE 

The Victory that Overcometh the World. First 
—The Eeliance 59 



VI. 

The Victory that Overcometh the World. Second 

— Endurance 70 



VII. 
Assurance. First — A Lawful Expectation 80 

VIII. 

Assurance. Second — The Witness of the Spirit 97 

IX. 
Love. First— The Chief Grace 110 

X. 

Love. Second — Its Scope... 124 

XI. 

The Service of Doing. First — Incitements 137 



CONTENTS. 7 

XII. 

PAGE 

The Service of Doing. Second — Encouragements... 155 

XIII. 
The Service of Doing. Third — Fruit 169 

XIV. 

The Service of Suffering. First — The Consecration 

and the Covenant 182 

XV. 

The Service of Suffering. Second — The Submis- 
sion of Faith 193 

XVI. 

Thf Service of Suffering. Third— Christ Sustain- 
ing and Forearming 205 

XVII. 
The Border Land. First— Keassu ranee 221 

XVIII. 
The Border Land. Second— The Gloom and the Light. 238 



8 CONTENTS. 

XIX. 

PAGE 

The Border Land. Third — The Covenant Slumber. 248 



XX. 

Heaven. First — Things which Eye hath not seen nor 

Ear heard 262 



XXI. 

Heaven. Second — The Everlasting Sabbath 278 



UPWARD. 



t 

t 



I. 

RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 
FIRST — THE LONGING. 

HE first word spoken by a sinner on 
earth to his God expresses the true 
terror of the unforgiven soul: "I 
heard thy voice in the garden, and I was 
afraid." This awful fear of the presence 
of his Maker arose from his consciousness 
of an unsettled wrong then lying between 
himself and God. The voice from which 
he shrank was the same which he had 
often before heard, not only without dread, 
but with unspeakable delight. But then 
it was the voice of his heavenly Father 



10 . UPWARD. 

and Friend. His relations with that Being 
were unbroken; he knew that between 
himself and his Sovereign all was right, 
and, consequently, all was peaceful. He 
had no unhappy fear of God, for the love 
which was shed abroad in his heart, and 
which prompted his obedience, made the 
life which he lived like an angel's life — 
the life of love. Where this holy affection 
dwells terror has no home. 

Yes, in confidence and love it was an 
angel's life. Up now with our thoughts 
to that life! — to the dwelling-place of the 
sinless beings who do ever behold the face 
of our Father which is in heaven! 

By contrast, the contemplation will 
afford the most impressive view of the 
weariness of abiding under the sense of 
unforgiven sin. Through it we shall bettei 
understand both the occasion and the cha- 
racter of the unreconciled sinner's pantings 
for rest. 

Celestial ones, angelic and glorified, 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 11 

draw near to the throne upon which their 
infinitely holy Sovereign sits. His holi- 
ness awakens no dread in them, because 
it involves them in no condemnation. It 
ensures their happiness, and not their 
ruin. While its intrinsic beauty, render- 
ing it worthy of love from all worlds, be- 
comes for them a delightful contempla- 
tion, they know that its bearing toward 
themselves is never wrath, but always 
love. 

They adore the miyht of God. Their 
songs address Him that sitteth upon the 
throne — the emblem of dominion and 
power. From his arm of strength they 
have nothing to fear. Over them it is ex- 
tended with protecting vigilance. When 
it is raised in destructive power, it falls 
only upon the enemies of heaven. 

Their anthems celebrate the righteous- 
ness of the eternal Lawgiver. The same 
scrupulous justice which ensures wrath 
for sin, makes the pleasure of obedience 



12 UPWARD. 

doubly blessed, because, in addition to its 
intrinsic joy, there comes the assurance of 
an approving reward. 

With glowing hearts they contemplate 
the sublime structure of the government 
of God, immeasurable in magnitude and 
infinite in wisdom. Before their view is 
spread a system of polity embracing the 
universe for its field and eternity for its 
length of administration ; infinitely com- 
prehensive, and just as infinitely minute; 
a subject for eternal study and unutterable 
wonder. Contemplating the far-reaching 
plans and sure faithfulness of this ad- 
ministration, they feel no alarm from the 
truth, so terrible to souls in revolt, that 
this government has a special bearing 
upon each individual, from which no 
power can deliver and which no flight 
can escape. They never tremble under 
the thought of the omniscience of the Sove- 
reign in this dominion. For them there 
is no dismay in the inquiry, " Whither 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 13 

shall I go from thy Spirit, or whither 
shall I flee from thy presence?" — no fear- 
fulness in the reflection that if they ascend 
into heaven, or make their beds in hell, 
or take the wings of the morning and 
dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, the 
eye of the holy God will follow them, and 
his arm will bring them forth. All which 
makes this government fearful to the 
wicked commends it to the good. The 
same principles which doom the one, ex- 
alt the other. 

But happier, as we may suppose, than 
all else in the experience of these shining 
ones, they live in the light of the love of 
God. Beauty loves the light; it is only 
deformity that dreads exposure. Those 
dwellers in the everlasting light of the 
love of God look abroad without fear, for 
the miscreant features of sin do not clothe 
their faces with shame. They look up- 
ward without dread, for those rays are 
shed with conforming power upon them- 



14 UPWARD. 

selves. Love, holy, celestial love, is chief 
in that glory of the Lord which, reflected 
as in a glass upon hiin whose faith beholds 
it, changes him into the same image from 
glory to glory. 

Now reverse all these emotions, and we 
have the experience of the unreconciled 
sinner. He is terrified by the Presence 
before which seraphs rejoice. Like him 
who was afraid when he heard the voice 
of the Lord God walking in the garden in 
the cool of the day, his soul is troubled by 
the entire loss of the divine conformity. 
If he dares to think of the holiness of 
God, he beholds in it the condemnation 
of himself. There is some strange ar- 
rangement in his powers of observation 
which ever forbids him to contemplate 
God's moral attributes by themselves 
alone. In the same picture where he 
gazes on the divine holiness, that loath- 
some thing, his own heart, always occupies 
a conspicuous place. It is one of the 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 15 

weary experiences of impenitency that 
the sinner, in all his moral contemplations, 
is compelled to meet this double vision, 
God and his own heart side by side. And 
thus the delight with which a world of 
holy beings view the righteousness, the 
holiness and the love of God, becomes in 
him terror whenever he turns his eye to- 
ward the same glorious spectacle. 

Some of the most terrible convictions 
of sin are produced by a sight of the glory 
of God. The vision once overwhelmed 
even a good man, whose spirit was yet too 
far short of heaven to bear the view of 
the Lord on his throne, high and lifted 
up, his train filling the temple, the sera- 
phim standing above and crying one to 
another, "Holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; 
the whole earth is full of his glory!" It 
was the contrast between this awful ma- 
jesty and his own sinful person which un- 
manned him. "Then, said I, Woe is me, 
for I am undone, because I am a man of 



16 UPWARD. 

unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of 
a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes 
have seen the King, the Lord of hosts." 
If one whose soul had felt the peace of 
forgiving love w T as thus bowed with shame 
on beholding himself in direct contrast 
with God, is there any wonder that the 
sinner shrinks with affright from a simi- 
lar exhibition? In this part of his expe- 
rience he knows the truth that there is no 
peace for the wicked. Here he recognizes 
that first insuppressable want of the un- 
forgiven soul — the want of reconciliation 
with God. 

Terror in view of the natural greatness 
of God may not be so instantly felt. Men 
of no religion find some points of observa- 
tion where they become inspired with no- 
ble thoughts of the divine grandeur, and 
they have recorded such thoughts in lan- 
guage which will live in the memorials of 
human eloquence. They have studied the 
course of the divine administration as we 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 17 

peruse the histories of empires or the re- 
velations of science, and, surprised by the 
skill of the system and the strength of its 
working, they have frankly and admiringly 
confessed its author Grod. In the book of 
nature they have read the beauty and sub- 
limity of his ways. They have looked on 
summer landscapes when their dews spark- 
led in the morning sun, and they have 
spoken of the creating and adorning hand 
in words of rapture. They have trod the 
rustic lawn, 

" Where violets sweet 
Purpled the moss-bed at their feet," 

and thought of the wondrous transforma- 
tion of ashy dust into manifold shapes 
and colors of beauty. They have gazed 
upon cataracts whose roar has been the 
cradle-hymn of infant centuries and the 
death-song of old expiring ages ; they have 
followed the Eternal footsteps along the 
paths of astronomical science, and there 

beheld Him "who spreadeth out the 

2 * B 



18 UPWARD. 

heavens, and treadeth upon the waves of 
the sea; who maketh Arcturus, Orion 
and Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south," until among these exhaustless 
fields of wonder they have repeated with 
real enthusiasm, "0 Lord, how manifold 
are thy works ! in wisdom hast thou made 
them all." 

But even here, among these spectacles 
of the natural greatness of Grod, the sinner 
is troubled if he looks too far. The field 
is sublime, but his view can take no broad 
sweep of it without lighting upon points 
in the Divine majesty of which he dare 
not think. He fears to reflect that the 
attributes disclosed exist for the support 
of that moral government to which he is 
inseparably linked. The great thought 
of infinite strength burdens the soul that 
is compelled to contemplate it as the 
power of an unreconciled and avenging 
God. The Divine omniscience which, in 
the abstract, he has often admired, becomes 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 19 

terrible under the reflection that this all- 
seeing Eye is searching him through, and 
that an escape from its scrutiny is hope- 
less. When for an instant his imagina- 
tion glows with the lofty conception of 
God measuring the waters in the hollow 
of his hand, meting out heaven with the 
span, comprehending the dust of the earth 
in a measure, weighing the mountains in 
scales and the hills in a balance, stretch- 
ing out the heavens as a curtain, and 
spreading them out as a tent to dwell in, 
how soon this enthusiasm is chilled by 
the suggestion of conscience that it is not 
for him to say, 

" This awful God is mine — 
My Father and my love !" 

In short, his Maker has no perfection 
which he can behold without dread. From 
the divine holiness conviction of sin flashes 
upon his conscience and wears down his 
soul. From the greatness of the Eternal 
terrific apprehensions of wrath arise. Thus 



20 TJPWAKD. 

remorse and fear divide the dominion 
within him. Sinner, Jesus knew you 
better than you know yourself when he 
spoke of you as weary and heavy-laden. 
Better than yourself he knew your first 
spiritual want when he offered you rest. 

But some sinners, without really mean- 
ing to be uncandid, tell us that these rep- 
resentations do not accord with their 
personal experience. They speak of hours 
and days spent in mirth; some refer to 
their constitutional tranquillity of temper, 
and others to their habitual joviality; and 
they array this experience against the 
testimony that a life of sin is always mis- 
erable — that " the wicked man travaileth 
with pain all his days" Some go farther, 
and insist that even from a scriptural 
stand-point we must expect to see carnal 
ease the more frequent type of impeni- 
tency; that with u the harp and the viol, 
the tabret and pipe and wine in their 
feasts, they regard not the work of the 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 21 

Lord ;" that the life of the sinner, being that 
of one who has no fear of God before his 
eyes, is more likely to be spent in spiritual 
stupidity than in terror. Such views 
have an air of candor, and should be can- 
didly considered. 

Let it be admitted that the general 
course of sin is one of stolid indifference 
to religion; that under the protection of 
this apathy the sinner in the hot pursuit 
of worldly good can hold remorse and 
alarm at bay ; that substituting the shrines 
of pleasure, fame or gold for the altar's 
heavenly worship, he can paganize his 
nobler nature, and, forgetting there is a 
God above, he can also forget that he 
lives an unforgiven rebel under his do- 
minion. The necessity for admitting the 
reality of this experience is, alas! too im- 
perative. It is too true that the sinner is 
often reckless of the fear as well as the 
claims of God. 

But does this prove that there is ever a 



22 UPWARD. 

moment of tranquillity of heart in a life of 
sin? Let it be granted that the Bible 
does sustain the sinner's assertion that he 
is able to regard the most solemn things 
with apathy: are we to admit the wild in- 
ference that recklessness is peace, or that 
because his impenitency does not impress 
his moral feelings, therefore it does not 
trouble him? What if it is said that there 
is no fear of God before the sinner's eyes? 
In the same discourse, and in immediate 
connection, it is recorded: " Destruction 
and misery are in their ways, and the way 
of peace have they not known" Both these 
statements are true, and there is no diffi- 
culty in reconciling them. We have a 
witness already on the stand, one that the 
sinner has himself called up — his own ex- 
perience. Pushing the examination of 
that witness, we may find that there is a 
false face to be torn from spiritual care- 
lessness, and that the sentence of God — 
no peace to the wicked — is an eternal in- 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 23 

scription cut into the monument of living 
humanity to record the death of holiness 
in the human heart. 

From that witness we wring out this 
confession — reluctant, slow, but terrible — 
the sinner purchases his carelessness at the 
expense of his moral degradation. He must 
forget his immortal nature and lose sight 
of this noblest fact in his existence, that 
he is a being of superior order, associated 
by filiation with the nature of God. Every 
moment of exemption from terror of the 
Divine anger is a moment of practical 
atheism — ''without God in the world." He 
does not say, " I contemplate my relation 
to the- character, law and government of 
God, and then I am at peace." But he 
parries remorse and fear by cultivating 
obliviousness of his relation to his heav- 
enly Sovereign. He looks abroad upon 
earth for comfort because he dares not 
look up to heaven. He pants in the chase 
after groveling pleasures because the 



24 UPWARD. 

cessation of this pursuit leaves time for 
solemn reflection, and reflection gives 
conscience an opportunity to speak. Every 
observation of the order of nature tells 
him that he looks in the wrong direction 
for good. Nature teaches that the foun- 
tain is the place from whence to seek sup- 
plies — that those who desire good should 
come to tbe exhaustless treasure of good- 
ness. The most simple principles of order 
instruct him that an immortal soul will 
yearn for immortal joys, and that the at- 
tempt to satiate these cravings with the 
trifles of an hour is only an effort to wipe 
out from the soul the imprint of the Di- 
vinity and shrivel it to the capacity of the 
brute. 

The intelligent sinner is not ignorant 
of this; why, then, does he not follow the 
suggestions of this plain order of things? 
He wants pleasure; why does he not go 
at once to the fountain of pleasure? He 
longs for good ; why does he not seek it 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 25 

direct from the exhaustless treasure? 
The natural yearnings of the soul prompt 
her to fly to some boundless field of en- 
joyment ; why not bid her plume herself 
for a flight to realms of glory and honor 
and immortality in pursuit of the ever- 
lasting life ? Why will he clip her soar- 
ing pinions and force her to forget her 
heavenly birth by fastening her as a 
crawling worm to the dirt ? Why in his 
search for delights. will he thus repudiate 
his own judgment, browbeat his immor- 
tality, and condemn his spiritual nature 
to chafe in sensual fetters until its noble 
aspirations are all dead ? 

The same monotonous answer is ever 
at hand. His soul is oppressed with a 
consciousness of unreconciliation toward 
God, and he is afraid to look heavenward 
for a single blessing. He dares not at- 
tempt the pursuit of any good when the 
attempt involves an effort to approach 
God. He remembers the wrong which 



26 UPWARD. 

lies between his soul and God; he must 
seek an escape from the remorse which a 
sense of that wrong awakens, and so he 
flies to his carnal delights to become ob- 
livious of all that he ought to remember. 

Yet he finds, after all, that the sea of 
worldly delights is not filled with the true 
Lethean waters. Its power to produce ob- 
livion is but temporary, existing only 
during the moments of actual immersion. 
Hence he must plunge again and again. 
In other words, the frolic, revel, or more 
refined social gayeties, the mirage of hu- 
man ambition, the golden will-of-the- 
wisp — some of these must be pursued in- 
cessantly, for they form the only carnal 
relief for the pain of solemn reflections 
upon his relations to God. And then, 
forsooth, the pleasures to which he is 
driven and held by such terrors are cited 
in proof that a life of impenitency is not a 
life of pain ! 

Lord, deliver us from sin ! Deliver our 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 27 

consciences from its burden and our 
hearts from its pollution! And in special 
mercy, Lord! deliver our reason from 
its logic ! 

The truth is, all forgetful ness of Grod 
which is secured by such means, so far 
from being a medicine for the sinner's 
burning moral fever, is only a symptom of 
its existence. The search for relief proves 
the reality of the anguish. The fact of 
this apathy toward religion must be con- 
sidered in connection with its nature and 
the manner in which it is produced. The 
very recklessness of the sinner, when we 
reflect how and why it is cultivated, is one 
of the strongest confirmations of the word: 
"Trouble and anguish shall make him 
afraid." 

There lies in every moral nature a sense 
that the short and sure road to peace is 
reconciliation with God who has been 
disowned, and his government which has 
been cast off. 



II. 

RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 

SECOND — THE ACCOMPLISHMENT. 

* 

tHE time has come for the unreconciled 
sinner to turn from this wearisome 
j strife and seek his peace with God by 
the cross of Christ. "All things are of 
God, who hath reconciled us to himself by 
Jesus Christ." 

But what is this cross of Christ? In 
fact and efficacy it is this: 

When sin had done its worst upon hu- 
man character and condition, the Divine 
arrangement for mercy was revealed. Its 
execution began in " the blood of Christ, 
who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered 
himself without spot to God." Sin was 
enthroned in a -.corrupt nature. This cor- 

28 . 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 29 

ruption, derived from the common source 
of human generation, was universal, and it 
pervaded the whole human nature. The 
conscience must be purged from dead 
works, and the whole man washed from 
moral loathsomeness. So also the amen- 
ability of the sinner to the highest claims 
and extremest penalty of the holy law of 
heaven must be met, honored and satisfied. 
The greatness of the sacrifice was com- 
mensurate with the great demand. The 
Redeemer met the case as he found it. 
His sacrifice was real, for he made his 
soul an offering for sin. In this work 
he stood in the sinner's place; for, all 
sinless himself, God made him to be sin 
for us. It is not in outward sufferings 
alone that the final doom of the unforgiven 
sinner consists. Its chief element is the 
frown of God felt in the soul as a burden 
of wrath. Let whoever doubts this, read 
Revelation vi. 16, 17. This soul-felt wrath 
of God was the cup which Jesus drank to 

3* 



30 UPWARD. 

the dregs. From his cross we hear little 
complaint of physical sufferings, terrible 
as they were. The thorns in his brow 
and the nails in his flesh awoke, so far as 
we learn, no cry of anguish. That dying 
expostulation, whose echoes will linger 
for ever through the realm of redemption, 
was pressed from the soul of this sinless 
One by the weight of this great wrath — a 
feeling of desertion, as if in anger forsaken 
by God. 

It is vain to ask how this could be felt 
at the moment of his most intense obedi- 
ence to the will of God, and when he must 
have known that the Father was well- 
pleased with it all. Redemption is the great 
mystery of godliness. We do not study it as 
cold philosophers, nor ask for scientific 
solutions of its problems; for the sweetest 
element in religion will be gone when 
proud men have outridden all faith with 
their philosophy. We stand in the shad- 
ow of the cross, where the very ground is 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 31 

tremulous under the quiverings of the suf- 
ferer. We long for redemption from such 
wrath as the soul feels when, deserted in 
anger, it looks in vain for one smile of 
God. We listen, and, lo! that shriek, with 
which our voices should have rent the 
prison of despair — u My God! my God! 
why hast thou forsaken me?" 

There, for the moment, that was endured 
which the law doomed us to endure for 
ever. There the chastisement of our peace 
was once upon Christ, and now his heav- 
enly intercession preserves for that atone- 
ment an ever-living efficacy. Thus w r e 
learn that, as our sin wrought his death, 
so his righteousness can work our life — 
that as he was made sin for us, so we are 
made the righteousness of God in him. 
This may be all dark to those who would 
straiten the Divine ways to the scant 
limits of human understanding, but it is 
enough for us that we behold the beauty 
of the scheme in the light of our wants. 



32 UPWARD. 

It is the provision that we need, and be- 
fore we are moved from this faith, we must 
hear some better answer to the great ques- 
tion, " How should man be just with God?" 
Still the way to reconciliation with God 
through Christ is not fully disclosed until 
we are told of the Holy Spirit following, 
with his peculiar influences, the work of 
Christ in the world. Every solemn emo- 
tion in which the sinner is reminded of 
his need of redeeming mercy is the whis- 
per of that Spirit in his soul. Every 
loud, open call, through providential dis- 
pensations or the messages of grace, is the 
same warning of God. When he turns 
from his revolt, it is because the Spirit 
works in him repentance and submission. 
When he is justified, he feels the power 
of the same Spirit imparting to him be- 
lieving faith and applying to him the 
pardon purchased in the atonement. 
Under all the remaining experience of 
religion this Spirit upholds him in the 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 33 

hour of temptation, strengthens his heart 
for duty, attends him with its support in 
the furnace of affliction, sustains him in 
the hour of death, and makes safe his 
passage to glory. 

This, then, is the cross of Christ. This 
is the power, and these are the blessings 
which well out from the atonement, their 
spring. 

Here, too, arises another and crowning- 
view of sin. A wholesome estimate of 
sin is ever the accompaniment of recon- 
ciliation with God. The dreadfulness of 
human rebellion must be measured by the 
greatness of the sacrifice indispensable for 
the change of the rebel to a loving subject 
of the throne of heaven. The Lord Jesus 
stooped no lower and endured no more 
than w r as demanded by the magnitude of 
the guilt of man. The sight of our suffer- 
ing Saviour also gives this darker aspect 
to the soul's revolt — that it is pursued 
after conditions of peace are opened and 



34 UPWAKD. 

the sinner's reconciliation is besought on 
the gentlest terms. For now his revolt 
carries all the appearance of a desperate 
purpose on his part to try the issue — who 
shall triumph, himself or God — whether 
he shall dethrone his Maker or be crushed 
by Omnipotence. 

But, above all other aspects of sin, it 
appears most shocking in view of the love 
of the cross. There the Redeemer of 
sinners meets his hour of agony without 
even the consolation of his Father's smile. 
Let us draw near to this great sight, that 
we may know how God feels for men. 
The sufferer seems to ask if there be any 
sorrow like unto his sorrow. What a 
mingling of horror of sin and tenderness 
for the sinner in that appeal from his 
cross, unspoken in words, but coming out 
from the mute anguish in his eye : " The 
cup of wrath! I drink it to save you from 
drinking it for ever. My heart of love! be- 
hold its choicest compassions lavished on 



i 



• RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 35 

yourself: shall it not win the recompense of 
your love? 

Is it not enough that the rebel has re- 
volted from his Maker, broken the right- 
eous covenant and placed himself in the 
way of the terrors of the Almighty ? Will 
not love now subdue the heart which every 
other excellence of God has failed to 
move ? The matchless love of his injured 
Sovereign, expressed in the unexampled 
sorrow of Christ on the cross — can he 
withstand that also? 

Heaven and earth, hear and be aston- 
ished! The proud rebel has not even the 
grace to deplore his own part in loading 
the Redeemer with this affliction. He 
cares nothing for the share which his own 
sins have borne in the deed. He bestows 
perhaps one cold look upon the solemn 
spectacle — perhaps turns his ear for one 
callous hearing of the imploring entreaty 
of Christ — then bids the tender Spirit of 
grace begone, and exults that he is above 



36 UPWAKD. 

the subduing influence of the compassion 
of Heaven. Who will now doubt the deep, 
the radical depravity of the human heart? 

Extend the view to that field of the holy 
Spirit's operations which has been noticed, 
and the madness of this rebellion takes 
the suicidal type. In sinning against the 
Holy Ghost the sinner sins against his 
own soul. That Spirit is the last agent 
ever to be employed in restoring rebels 
to the favor of God. Hence the necessary 
consequence of resisting its motions in 
the heart is the self-exclusion of the sinner 
from the hope of reconciliation. Only in 
this light can we comprehend the import 
of the woe which God denounces upon 
those from whom he departs. 

This, then, is sin in the light of the re- 
deeming mercy — the sinner as seen from 
the stand-point of Calvary. The unhappy 
creature who shrinks from looking over 
the smallest of his accounts with God can 
yet do this. He can tread under foot the 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 37 

Son of God, count the blood of the cove- 
nant wherewith he was sanctified an un- 
holy thing, and do despite to the Spirit of 
grace. If he does not carry it to the irre- 
vocable point where God finally gives him 
over to himself, he will be led by this con- 
victing power of the cross to yield himself 
a captive to grace. Why did he not long- 
since do it? The only answer is found 
in the insanity of human rebellion against 
God. The last battle is often the fiercest. 
Sometimes the very malignancy of the 
final struggle shows to the combatant 
what a heart he possesses, and leads him, 
under a Divine enabling, to the great re- 
solve that such a heart cannot be endured, 
and it shall submit. At the feet of Jesus, 
"clothed and in his right mind," the peni- 
tent and restored soul sings of the recon- 
ciling grace — 

" I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
Come unto me and rest ; 
Lay down, thou weary one, lay down 
Thy head upon my breast. 

4 



38 UPWABD. 

"I came to Jesus as I was, 

Weary, and worn, and sad ; 
I found in him a resting-place, 
And he has made me glad." 

Here is the first unterrified view of 
God. The sinner has turned from the 
strife in which he knew that he was wrong, 
and surrendered himself without con- 
dition to Christ as his peace with God. 
He has awakened to life under the voice 
of forgiving grace, and his heart glows 
with the assurance that all is now right 
between himself and his Sovereign. The 
morning sun of his soul's Sabbath has 
risen on his darkness, and is ascending 
to the meridian of perfect day. 

It is none too soon; he was haggard 
and worn in the long war. His soul was 
like the bird sent out by Noah. All the 
world of sin was a shoreless watery waste. 
With no nourishment and no resting rock, 
her weary wings were about to fail. It is 
time the ark was entered. It is time to 
listen to the Messenger of the covenant's 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 39 

voice to tired wanderers from Jesus, that 
in him there is rest. 

But the change ! the change ! God, who 
was dreaded, is now loved. The Majesty 
which inspired terror is now beheld with 
open face. The load of unforgiven sin is 
gone, and the lustings after sin are trans- 
formed to aspirations for holiness. The 
voice so lately feared is music to the souL 
The law which condemned is reconciled in 
Christ. The Divine government, so ter- 
rible while its power was arrayed against 
sin, is now a shield of defence accepted 
with joy. The everlasting covenant has 
become the pledge of safety. The renewed 
man is made to feel himself committed to 
Christ, under the Father's covenant pro- 
mise, as the fruit of his sufferings on the 
cross. Belonging to the Redeemer, as a 
portion of the promised reward for the 
offering of his soul for sin, he is not only 
to shine henceforth in the glory of the 
mediatorial throne, but to become himself 



40 UPWAKD. 

an integral part of that glory. Christ is 
to be admired in him, and the Spirit is 
now forming him into such an image as 
will adorn his Redeemer. For this ex- 
alted service he is washed, justified and 
sanctified. Purchased and wrought for 
such use, Christ already possesses too 
precious an interest in him to allow the 
work to stop incomplete. His Mediator 
assumes the care of settling his relations 
with heaven. The Advocate makes all 
right between the returning sinner and 
his God. The reconciliation is complete. 
Oh, the change ! the change ! A new 
world of gladness is opened. The atmos- 
phere which he breathes is joy; peace in 
believing is his repose. Ashes are ex- 
changed for beauty ; mourning for the 
oil of joy ; heaviness for the garment of 
praise. He lives a new life, and "all that 
life is love." The deathly darkness of the 
night of sin has fled before the morning 
of grace. No lengthening shadows are to 



RECONCILIATION WITH GOD. 41 

mark the decline of this opening day. Its 
morning is for earth; its meridian, the 
" sacred, high, eternal noon" of heaven. 

u I heard the voice of Jesus say, 

I am this dark world's light ; 

Look unto me ; thy morn shall rise, 

And all thy day be bright. 

I looked to Jesus, and I found 

In him my star, my sun, 

And in that Light of Life I'll walk 

Till all my journey's done." 
4* 



G^fefe^)^ 




III. 

CONSCIENCE. 
FIRST — AT WAR. 

N all the moral experiences which 
have been mentioned, Conscience 
makes itself felt as a power for dis- 
quiet or tranquillity. The reproaching 
conscience agonizes — the approving con- 
science gives peace. 

The power of conscience as an enemy 
militant, was well illustrated by an oc- 
currence said to have taken place many 
years ago in one of the western shires of 
England. A miserable man had crowned 
a career of wickedness by the commission 
of a crime of the highest grade of atrocity. 
He was brought before the assizes on trial 
for his life. The evidence against him 

42 



CONSCIENCE. 43 

was dark, the countenances of the jurors 
were portentous and the court was un- 
usually solemn. All appearances con- 
spired to fill him with the worst appre- 
hensions. But, unexpectedly to himself, 
the skill of his counsel was successful. 
The course of justice was perverted, and 
he received a verdict of acquittal. He 
was once more a free man. 

Free — from what? From the court, 
the bailiff, the iron-bound cell and the 
executioner; but not from the officer of 
God. He knew the unsettled wrong be- 
tween himself and justice. He had the 
conscience of crime, but not of expiation. 
He uttered no shout of liberty, but went 
silently home, threw himself upon his 
bed, turned upon his face and groaned 
aloud. A neighbor who came in sought 
to quiet his distress by repeatedly re- 
minding him that he was cleared. The 
wretched man at length turned himself, 
and with a stern, desperate look inquired, 



44 UPWARD. 

"Where will I find a court to clear me 
from my own conscience?" The pangs of 
his spirit increased from day to day. In 
less than two weeks he died from no per- 
ceptible cause but remorse. Conscience 
killed him. 

Conscience, what a witness art thou 
for Grod in the human breast! Every- 
thing else about the mind may be dis- 
torted; everything holy lost; the bosom 
where love should be enthroned given 
over to the reign of hatred; the passions, 
which ought to lie still, all in surging 
strife; the judgment subverted by the 
malign will, and the reason made ir- 
rational on every moral subject; still, 
amid the perverted and sin-ruined facul- 
ties, it holds its integrity as the scorching 
foe of wrong. It is among the depraved 
qualities of the mind like Milton's seraph 
Abdiel in the council of Satan : 

" Faithful found 
Among the faithless — faithful only he ; 



CONSCIENCE. 45 

Among innumerable false, unmoved, 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrified, 
His loyalty lie kept." 

It is not meant that the faculty of con- 
science suffered none of the effects of the 
apostasy in Paradise. Our moral ruin 
was there complete. There is no attri- 
bute in the unrenewed man to which 
holiness can be ascribed. Conscience is 
deeply implicated in the sad results of 
sin. The influence of depravity over it 
is felt in its often becoming remiss, stupe- 
fied, or, in the language of Scripture, 
" seared with a hot iron," so that sinners 
frequently live for a season unterrified by 
its reproaches. But the thing meant is, 
that sooner or later it is sure to awake, 
and that, when aroused, it takes the part 
of Heaven against a sinner. As a natu- 
ral faculty, it takes the side of God when- 
ever it acts at all. 

Neither is it meant that it is a teacher 
of the will of God in general. Gross de- 



46 UPWARD. 

lusions and wild licentiousness have come 
from assigning to it a power which it 
never possessed. It has one great work 
to do, and in that work it is mighty in- 
deed. It is not its office to teach any 
moral philosophy or inspired truth be- 
yond this simple proposition — that right 
ought always to be practiced, and wrong 
ought always to be avoided. No fair con- 
struction of Romans ii. 15 will represent 
it as doing anything more than to rebuke 
or accuse of wrong the people mentioned 
for sinning against those teachings of na- 
ture and reason which had just been re- 
cited; and nowhere else in the word of 
God is any other teaching-power ascribed 
to it. When we would learn what is 
right or wrong, God sends us to his re- 
vealed word and to the coincident in- 
structions of our reason. Conscience is 
given to accuse or excuse; to enforce the 
sense of wrong or justification; to fill the 
sinner with remorse for known guilt, and 



CONSCIENCE. 47 

to cause the good man to feel the ap- 
proval of God and become serene.* 

The sinner's great war is against God. 
He has entered the lists with Omnipo- 
tence, and this alone will ensure his de- 
feat and the utter prostration of his en- 
ergies soon. But his strife with con- 
science takes another direction, which 
makes the war doubly disheartening. 
This conscience is a part of his own 
nature, so that in contending with it he 
is fighting himself. Here he becomes his 
own foe. If he triumphs — and he some- 
times does for a time, so far as to still the 
self-accusing voice — he only vanquishes 
himself; and when he comes to be 
crushed by remorse, he crushes himself. 
This is the strange extremity to which he 
is reduced. In relation to the Divine 
law, God's views of sin, his dealings with 

* The views offered in this paragraph are purposely short 
of a proper metaphysical discussion, which is not called for 
in these pages. Just so much is said as will advance the relig- 
ious purposes of the work. 



48 UPWARD. 

those who are guilty of it, and his admin- 
istration in general, the unholy heart is 
against the Almighty, but the conscience 
is for him. It is a striking disadvantage 
on the sinner's side of the contest that 
he must contend with Heaven and him- 
self at the same time. On the highest 
throne, one enemy sits; in his own 
bosom, the other dwells. 

If he will persist in such a contest, it 
can have but one issue. He has made 
foes to himself, which cannot and should 
not give him peace or rest. When he 
approaches the dark valley, deserted by 
every moral support, remorseful memories 
wring his heart. He has drawn upon his 
dying hour the frown of both Grod above 
and his conscience within. He is forsaken 
by heaven and despised by himself. 

Every appalling view of his case is 
aggravated when our thoughts pursue 
him to the world of spirits. There 
memory reviews the past — the mercy 



CONSCIENCE. 49 

once offered from the cross, the resistance 
to that mercy, the calls of the ministry of 
reconciliation unheeded, the strivings of 
the Holy Spirit resisted, Sabbaths spent 
in sin, the work of life neglected through 
the morning, noon and evening hours of 
the day of grace, until its sun of hope 
went down in the night of despair. Then 
conscience will be felt as the power which 
arms those recollections with the sting of 
remorse. Worse than all besides will be 
the anguish of that long, loud wail, rising- 
distinct from among the moans of the 
realms of mourning — "God was right, and 
I was wrong!" 

Thoughtless reader, does your heart 
pant to pursue the contest with such a 
foe? "Lay thine hand upon him; re- 
member the battle; do no more." 

5 D 



IV. 

CONSCIENCE. 
SECOND — AT PEACE. 

Q[ DYING- saint had just listened to the 
l\ reading of the fourteenth chapter of 
S) St. John's Gospel. "My son," said 
he to the reader, " now bring to me the 
catechism of our Church." The young 
man brought the book. 

" Now read the Benefits" The young- 
man read: "The benefits which in this 
life do accompany or flow from justifica- 
tion, adoption and sanctification are as- 
surance of God's love, peace of con- 
science — " 

"Stop!" said the dying man, "stop 
there! let me think of that. Yes, that is 
it — peace of conscience! Oh, what an 

50 



CONSCIENCE. 51 

enemy conscience once was! What a 
friend now! How gladly I would have 
destroyed it then, but what could I now 
do without its approval? Peace of con- 
science — that is it! Peace through our 
Lord Jesus Christ! Peace! Peace!" 

And yet, viewed as a faculty, this was 
the same conscience which pursued, even 
to a despairing death, the guilty wretch 
spoken of in the commencement of the 
last chapter. The only difference is that, 
in this case, it approved and -sustained ; 
in the other it stung and crushed. In 
each alike it was the same faithful witness 
for God. Its operations vary with the 
ever-varying states of our souls. The 
presence or absence of regenerating grace 
greatly affects its tones, vigilance and 
power; but through all its different de- 
grees of animation and variety of opera- 
tions, whenever it does lift its voice, it 
speaks out for God. The same conscience 
which affrights the sinner cheers the peni- 



52 UPWARD. 

tent at the cross and blesses the path of 
his pilgrimage with peace. The same 
conscience which creates those frightful 
spectres which haunt the dying chamber 
of the unforgiven man, assures the de- 
parting saint that all between God and 
his soul is pleasant. The same conscience 
which makes the undying worm of fu- 
ture hopeless remorse, dwells delightfully 
in the bosom of the ransomed saint in 
glory. 

The friend of God feels that his con- 
science and himself are at peace. It is 
not meant that his peace springs from a 
consciousness of personal innocence. He 
is but a redeemed sinner, whose conscience 
is purged from dead works by "the blood 
of Christ, who, through the eternal Spirit, 
offered himself without spot to God." The 
difference between himself and the sinner 
out of Christ does not consist in their 
respective amounts of personal guilt. 
Out of Christ, both are loaded with sin. 



CONSCIENCE. 53 

But the one has found refuge from the 
frown of God under the protection of the 
cross. His conscience is at peace because 
the Holy Spirit lays to his soul the as- 
surance that, "if any man sin, we have 
an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
Christ the righteous." The other seeks 
relief from the pangs of an accusing con- 
science by hardening himself against the 
reproof and forcing his attention away 
from his guilt. The whole story was told 
from the lips of the Christian on the brink 
of the river, just as we have it from the 
word of the Holy Spirit — " peace with God 
through our Lord Jesus Christ." The 
penitent, thus exalted above the fear 
which has torment, is no longer afraid to 
contemplate the past and the present — 
what he was and what he is. He makes 
no effort to stupefy his memory of sins, 
for the recollection of them inspires fresh 
love of his suffering Lord, upon whom they 
were laid. The remembrance of his guilt 

5 * 



54 UPWARD. 

brings him nearer to the cross, and there 
he hears the voice of forgiveness and feels 
the conforming power of the Holy Spirit. 
This Divine work in his soul is what 
brings himself and his conscience into 
peace. 

It is true there is a spurious trust, 
which allows of sin that grace may 
abound. It virtually says, The more sin 
the better, because the all-forgiving grace 
of Grod is then magnified. But tenderness, 
or a quick sensibility to wrong, is one of 
the special attributes of a good conscience. 
It revolts from all wrong, feels the shock 
of sin and rejoices in goodness. As a 
stimulant to carefulness of life, to an 
anxious watch against unholiness, and to 
a prayerful diligence to do the whole will 
of God, it stands side by side with the 
Christian graces of faith and love, the 
best of all guards against the world, the 
flesh and the devil. The emphatic testi- 
mony of the Holy Spirit, already quoted, 



CONSCIENCE. 55 

is that the blood of Christ purges the 
conscience of the believer from dead 
works to serve the living God. Lifting 
from the soul the burden of guilt, the 
peaceful conscience affords its possessor a 
holy confidence to seek Grod in prayer, so 
that he comes boldly to the throne of 
grace. There, under the Divine bright- 
ness, he beholds the beauty of holiness, 
and longs to have it impressed upon his 
own heart and exhibited in his whole 
life. There the condemnation is re- 
moved, and the heart thus disburdened 
is most earnest in its obedience, because 
its works of well-doing are un terrified 
and cordial. There is felt that peculiar 
security for holy living of which the be- 
loved disciple wrote: "Beloved, if our 
heart condemn us not, then have we con- 
fidence toward Grod. And whatsoever we 
ask, we receive of him, because we keep 
his commandments, and do those things 
that are pleasing in his sight. . . . And 



56 UPWARD. 

he that keepeth his commandments 
dwelleth in him, and he in him. And 
hereby we know that he abideth in us, by 
the Spirit which he hath given us." 

Peace — what beauty dwells in the very 
word! Still it is not expressive of the 
feelings now under contemplation without 
a new and enlarged meaning. Such a 
meaning it has received in the testament- 
ary promise of Jesus : " Peace I leave 
with you; my peace I give unto you; not 
as the world giveth, give I unto you." 

The mere absence of conflict makes the 
peace of the world. Carnal views of its 
blessedness seldom rise above the idea of 
freedom from disturbing agencies. Ex- 
emption from sorrows, fears and contests 
is all that is essential to the existence of 
such peace. But if this were all that is 
implied in the serenity of the conscience 
which Christ has pacified, what a void 
there would be in Christian happiness! 
Every positive element would be removed 



CONSCIENCE. 57 

from celestial peace ; the believer's joy 
would be despoiled of its living essentials, 
and heavenliness would depart from 
heaven. Everlasting thanks to Him who, 
in the school of happy experience, teaches 
us those sublimer views of peace which 
behold it as a sanctified quiet under the 
wing of an approving conscience! We 
find it not so much in what it removes as 
in what it imparts. 

"My peace I give unto you." The bless- 
edness which springs up ever fresh in the 
Saviour's own heart he shares with his 
disciple. Once he laid his own soul under 
the horror of God's frown, and through 
that he learned, as a thing of personal ex- 
perience, the joy of deliverance from 
Divine wrath. Throughout his previous 
conflicts with the living trials of human 
life he had derived support and comfort 
from his Father's smile and his own self- 
approving conscience. Struggling with 
the toils of his earthly pilgrimage, bearing 



58 UPWAKD. 

up against persecutions and the afflictions 
which oppressed his mortal nature, the 
peace which dwelt in his bosom filled him 
with consolation. The same heavenly 
inmate diffused its influence over his 
seasons of communion with the Father, 
such as we have an example of in the 
seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. 
The freedom of intercourse with heaven 
which he imparts is the same in which 
his own Spirit delighted. "As thou, 
Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they 
also may be one in us." In the placid 
happiness with which we are filled while 
enjoying this nearness to the King of hea- 
ven we participate in Christ's own bliss. 
"We drink with him at the same fountain of 
joy and sit in the same bower of delights. . 
Thus the serenity which we obtain 
through our Lord Jesus Christ becomes 
more than a gift from the Father of lights. 
It is literally "the peace of God, which 
passeth all understanding." 



V. 

THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH THE WORLD. 

FIRST — THE RELIANCE. 

» 

JPACH inwrought spiritual gift has 
4 ' some service for the spiritual man 
/ V which is peculiarly its own. Faith 
is the grace for support, for assurance and 
for victory. The leader of the Israelitish 
exodus was an example of its sustaining 
power. It is expressly ascribed to his 
faith, that, through all those long years of 
discouragement, which would have put 
any mortal energy out of heart and hope, 
"he endured as seeing Him who is invisi- 
ble." When Paul spoke his assurance of 
a house not made with hands, eternal in 
the heavens, he gave as the ground of it 
the inworking of Grod through which he 

5<J 



60 UPWARD. 

walked by faith, not by sight. But in no 
respect does faith become to the Christian 
a higher endowment than when it is felt 
as a triumphing grace. "This is the 
victory that overcometh the world, even 
our faith." First bringing the believer 
into union with Christ, it works through 
all its other influences up to that highest 
triumph where he can say that in tribu- 
lation, distress, persecution, famine, naked- 
ness, peril or sword — in death, life, things 
present or to come — in all these things he 
is more than conqueror through Him that 
loved him. 

We reach heaven only through victory. 
The triumphs of the redeemed soul, pres- 
ent or final, are a victor's triumphs. The 
crowns which are worn by glorified saints 
are victors' crowns ; the palms which they 
bear are victors' palms. u They overcame 
by the blood of the Lamb " Where there 
is conquest, there has been conflict. Victory 
is the turning-point in the fortunes of 



THE VICTOR Y THAT OVERCOMETH. 61 

war. It is the end of strife. It is ac- 
counted great and glorious only when the 
strife has been fierce and deadly. 

Where there is strife there is a foe. 
The believer is in life-and-death conflict 
with principalities and powers — the rulers 
of the darkness of this world ; and it is 
through as well as in this world they rule. 
He breasts the great army of worldly 
influences, arrayed to cut off his march 
toward heaven and crowd him down to 
ruin. We are told of the world, the flesh 
and the devil, as the three great enemies 
standing in array between the soul and 
heaven. But as the flesh is only a species 
of the genus world, and as through worldly 
seductions the devil gains the mastery, 
the victory that overcomes the world be- 
comes a victory over all, or the failure to 
overcome the world is a failure of all. If, 
as the issue of the conflict, an immortal 
soul is lost and sinks to the everlasting 
ruin, it is because the world is victor in 



62 UPWARD. 

the fight. If, on the other hand, that soul 
escapes the ruin, and from the dying bed 
soars away to the immortal life, it is the 
victory that overcometh the world. 

For this victory the enlisted Christian 
soldier strikes out. But let him mark 
well the whole ground of his hopes of 
triumph — the force for reliance, the plan 
of the campaign and the discipline of the 
field. In common war the laying out of 
campaigns upon impracticable theories, 
the working of weapons which can do no 
execution, or the occupation of lines from 
which there is no possible road to victory, 
are worse than a waste of strength. It 
brings in the end a defeat more productive 
of suffering than would have followed an 
early surrender. In the soul's warfare 
for the heavenly victory an analogous 
folly would result only from a neglect to 
study the force and means at command. 
Grod has mapped out for those who will 
adopt it a campaign which is incapable of 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 63 

failure; he has arranged for those who 
will make it their position, a line from 
which no storm of battle can drive them ; 
and he supplies the force in which from that 
line they can bear down upon flying foes, 
open the way to the land of conquest, 
and from thence send back the shout of 
finished victory. 

Then what is this victory that over- 
cometh the world ? 

Faith, passing up through lesser mean- 
ings, is complete only in this — a perfect 
reliance on the sufficiency of Christ ; the 
leaning of the believer on the atonement 
and intercession of the Redeemer for him 
and his grace in him. Mental belief in 
the doctrine of the cross, obedient belief 
and unquestioning belief, are all involved 
in this. Sweet and submissive confidence 
in the promises is also included — such as 
the promise of present support and coming- 
deliverance under all trials of flesh or 
spirit where patience in suffering is called 



64 UPWARD. 

for. In Hebrews xi. we have the finest illus- 
trations on record of the manifestations of 
faith in obedient and unquestioning sub- 
mission to the will of God, both in doing 
and suffering. The definition given to it 
in the first verse of the chapter speaks a 
volume of power to work the Christian 
life into its highest activities : " Faith is 
the substance of things hoped for; the 
evidence of things not seen." Here is a 
higher principle of either activity or en- 
durance than mere hope. The word earnest 
comes nearer to it — a word implying fore- 
taste as well as expectation — a specimen 
of the promised good now in hand, as well 
as an assurance of the whole to come. 
But beyond even this there lies, in the 
terms quoted, the idea of a true fore- 
stalling of the possession, making a present 
now of the glorious hereafter — in fact, 
making the coming glory so powerfully 
present to the feelings that the really 
present toils and sufferings are felt as 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 65 

things of the past. This, we are then 
told, was the power which wrought those 
wondrous acts of obedience, patience and 
endurance in Noah, Abraham, Moses and 
other ancient worthies, who, because they 
believed God, came off victors in the bat- 
tle with the world. They endured as 
seeing Him who is invisible ; they had 
respect unto the recompense of the reward. 

But even this view of faith, as the sub- 
stance of the things hoped for and the 
evidence of things not seen, fails to account 
for those high moral achievements, except 
as it is regarded in its relation to the 
cross. We must go back to the under- 
lying import of the term before stated, 
which lends reality and vitalizing energy 
to its lesser meanings — reliance on Christ. 
It puts on this fullness of meaning in the 
first experience of every true Christian. 

The first motion of the regenerate heart 
is one of reliance on the sufficiency of 
Christ as the Saviour of the soul. It is a 

6 * E 



66 UPWARD. 

plain, intelligible feeling — one that can be 
put into language as well as felt in the 
heart. Parting from all vain notions of 
self-justification, the believer accepts the 
justifying grace of the atonement as a pro- 
vision for himself. He does not believe 
the story of the death of Jesus merely as 
he believes the history of the wars of Ju- 
lius Caesar. His heart is not affected by 
the wrong done to the victim of the cross 
in the way that it is softened by the dying- 
scene of Socrates. Neither does his inter- 
est in the atonement rest at the conclusion 
that there is fullness in it for the redemp- 
tion of some sinners. But, coming with 
his own broken heart to the cross, and 
feeling himself one of the sinners for whom 
such expiation was needed, and one of 
those for whom it was really made, his 
believing and appropriating faith looks up 
to the cross and says — 

" There hung the man that died for me." 

Here is the conquest of self, the first 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 67 

triumph of faith and the grasping of the 
true force for all succeeding triumphs. 

We expect no victory for the soldier who 
goes into the field of strife in worthless 
armor, against overwhelming odds, and 
relying upon imaginary reinforcements 
never to appear. Such is all the sinner's 
hope of overcoming the world without 
Christ in him and for him. Influences 
hostile to grace have control of his heart. 
There is treason within, and through that 
he is disarmed of all strength for the con- 
flict with evil. His moral powers feel the 
inspiration of no living hatred of sin; no 
revolt from the slavery of worldly influ- 
ences excites his efforts to break the chain. 
If he feels the strife at all, every pleading 
of his own nature is for the enemy. Even 
stronger against him than the world with- 
out are the corrupt forces which his own 
bosom nourishes. The experience of mil- 
lions corroborates the Divine testimony, 
that before he can hope for victory over 



68 UPWARD. 

the world the conquest of himself must be 
made. The forces within him must be so 
thoroughly revolutionized in spirit that 
they will take the side of his soul against 
Satan. 

But how is this first battle to be fought? 
And who shall achieve this first victory — 
the victory within and over himself? 
The answer is short, satisfactory and 
scriptural. The battle has been fought, 
and the victory is to-day laid at the sin- 
ner's feet, awaiting only reception byiiis 
faith to become his victory. It is an old 
point — one of the elementary principles 
of the great atonement. We were helpless 
in the strife against our own corrupt pro- 
pensities. We had no power left to free 
ourselves from the bondage, and no price 
to purchase a ransom from it. There 
Christ met us. In the blood of his cross 
he paid the ransom. Alone he fought all 
the power arrayed for our eternal slavery 
to sin, and in his conquest over hell he 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 69 

broke that power for all who, with appro- 
priating faith, looking up to him as a 
personal Redeemer, can say, " My Lord 
and my God !" Coming to him for the 
victory which he on Calvary wrought for 
his people; approaching with hearts long- 
ing to find in it triumph over sin as well 
as deliverance from wrath ; yielding our 
entire confidence to the reality and suffi- 
ciency of this work of Christ; appro- 
priating to ourselves the Lord Jesus as 
our righteousness, — this is the faith which 
makes the victory of Christ to become in- 
ourselves our victory. It is the beginning 
of the victory that overcometh the world. 



VI. 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH THE WORLD. 



SECOND — ENDURANCE. 



[ITH Christ living in the heart bv a 
relying faith, "greater is he that is in 
you than he that is in the world." 
Thus we become armed for the conflict to 
come. Conflict to come? After what has been 
said of Christ having alone fought the battle 
for us against the powers of darkness, and of 
his having achieved the victory and given 
it over to us as our victory, is there still 
conflict to come? Yes, enough of watch- 
ing against spiritual foes, of wrestlings 
with fightings without and fears within, 
and of strife with worldly influences in 
every form in which they can be arrayed 
against the soul, to make felt the value of 

70 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 71 

faith as an armor in that part of the con- 
flict which is now laid upon ourselves. 
The faith through which the victory of 
the cross first became our victory must 
abide to the end ; and upheld by it, while 
we wrestle and pray and endure, all must 
be the working of the power of the atone- 
ment in us. We are saved only as we 
ourselves endure to the end; but when 
that end comes, we can only say as one 
dying Christian said, "I have not run — 
Christ carried me; /have not worked — 
Christ wrought in me; /have not con- 
quered — Christ vanquished for me: Christ 
has done all." 

It is an important point, and vital to a 
well-maintained Christian experience, that, 
while in the redemption of the believer 
from the bondage of corruption, Christ, 
without him, and alone upon Calvary, 
achieved the victory, in the conflict with 
opposing powers which he is to carry on 
to the end, Christ only works with him 



72 UPWAKD. 

and through him. In the war with the 
world and sin " we must fight if we would 
reign." We must win the crowns we 
would wear ; we must suffer with Jesus 
if we would be glorified with him. Our 
Christian course in this world begins with 
our Lord's victory ; our own lies at the 
end. The crown of our redemption already 
adorns the Redeemer's brow ; our own is 
laid up, not to be bestowed upon any one 
until he can say, " I have fought the good 
fight" — not I am fighting it, but I have 
fought it — " I have finished my course; I 
have kept the faith." 

In this life-long conflict of our own we 
find the full value of that highest character 
of Christian faith which makes it a reli- 
ance upon the all-sufficiency of Christ. 
Here it becomes to us incitement, support, 
endurance and the substance of the victory 
to come. The greatness and glory of its 
achievements reveal the sublime greatness 
of the grace itself. We see it in the ex- 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 73 

amples already referred to, recorded in 
Hebrews xi. — examples which are not to 
be thrown out as irrelevant to Christian 
faith because they were anterior to the 
great Christian sacrifice, for all the power 
of grace in our world before the actual 
occurrence of Christ's earthly mission was 
substantially the power of the cross. 
True, it was darkly, and only in expecta- 
tion such; but from the hour of the prom- 
ise that the seed of the woman should 
bruise the serpent's head, the power of 
Christ resting in his people has been the 
only effective antagonism to sin — the only 
support of the patience of the saints. And 
so, astonished at the magnitude of the 
grace which can thus appropriate this 
power, we read how faith girded men of 
God to subdue kingdoms, work righteous- 
ness, obtain promises, stop the mouths of 
lions, quench the violence of fire, escape 
the edge of the sword and to turn to flight 
the, armies of the aliens. We read how 

7 



74 UPWAKD. 

they were sustained by its strength, while, 
not accepting deliverance, they were 
stoned, were sawn asunder, were tempted, 
were slain with the sword, or while, 
driven from society and from employment 
because of their fidelity to Grod, they wan- 
dered about in sheepskins and goatskins, 
being destitute, afflicted, tormented — 
wandered in deserts and mountains and 
dens and caves of the earth. 

These are not to be passed off as the 
characteristics of the earlier times of the 
Church, or a type of consecration which 
belonged only to the martyr ages. It is,' 
in more or less measure, the one faith of 
all the children of our King ; and such it 
will remain until all who wear it as their 
armor in the conflict have passed over to 
the land of the conquerors. No genera- 
tion passes without furnishing illustrious 
examples of its power for support and 
comfort, for faithful action on the field, 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 75 

and for calm endurance and assured hope 
in the floods. 

We see one making an open profession 
of the name of Christ. We know his 
history, his social relations and his con- 
stitutional temperament, and we know 
the conflict of spirit which must grow out 
of them. We see him rising above the 
natural timidity of his shrinking nature, 
and above the social influences which are 
in active array against his resolved 
consecration to Jesus. We see him walk 
with unblenching brow abreast of oblo- 
quy and reproach — in fact abreast of every 
feeling within, and every influence with- 
out, to which his nature was once accus- 
tomed to yield. His resolution conquers 
all ; he forsakes all to follow Christ. 
What does it mean? It is the victory 
that overcometh the world, even his 
faith. We next watch the progression of 
his Christian life. All the influences 
around him — social, financial, political, or 



76 UPWAKD. 

any way affecting what are seemingly his 
worldly interest — suggest a lax piety, and 
invite to compromises with the world. 
They seem to lie in the direction of the 
friendship of the world, which is enmity 
with God. They frown upon a religion 
of open and earnest fidelity to Christ and 
his truth, and propose in its place a re- 
tiring and non-aggressive piety. But 
we see him, out of his warm heart for 
Jesus, breaking through every snare 
spread across his pilgrim path, and in all 
duty, in the sight of men, taking up his 
cross of doing and enduring for Christ. 
We see in him the spirit of constant com- 
munion with God, the daily crucifixion 
of inbred lusts, the living down of cor- 
rupt desires and unholy affections, and 
growing heavenly-mindedness and ripe- 
ness for heaven. Again we inquire how 
all this comes : we meet the same answer 
— it is the victory of faith over the world. 
We see another. He is a young man 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 77 

— the son in a home where there is purity, 
refinement and wealth. He is bound to 
that home by the tenderest love. But he 
turns thoughtfully and resolutely away 
from its endearments, because from the 
far-off homes of sin he has heard the 
cry, "Come over and help us!" We 
read his reply to the Missionary Board, 
who have inquired what his wishes con- 
cerning a location are : " When I gave 
myself to Christ, I did it unconditionally. 
In like manner I give myself to this 
work. As regards my place of labor, I 
have no wish but to obey the call of God. 
If in the great world, which must all be 
brought in for Christ, there are places of 
peculiar unpleasantness and exposure, I 
would not presumptuously seek them, 
but if the providence of God point the 
way thither, I would say, ' Speak, Lord ; 
thy servant heareth.' Christ has done 
more for me than I can ever do for him. 
My prayer is, that I may, more and more, 

7* 



78 UPWARD. 

make it my meat and drink to do his 
will." 

There is still another — a toiler in a 
humbler field, but useful in inverse ratio 
to its lowliness. We see her in the by- 
ways of our cities, or among the wilds of 
our country, with Bibles and tracts in her 
hand and prayer in her heart, going from 
house to house, inquiring for the welfare 
of souls, bowing meekly under abuse, 
bearing with the hardened, instructing 
the anxious, and cheering the neglected 
with thoughts of Christ here and heaven 
in sight. She has voluntarily chosen a 
path which leads away from public 
honors. Hers is an unobserved work. 
But where she walks the footsteps of the 
Holy Spirit are seen. In many dark 
corners of the land, she has been, and 
when she had gone people thought of her 
visits, and then thought of better things, 
for they felt that Grod had been with them. 

Subsequent articles will exhibit the 



THE VICTORY THAT OVERCOMETH. 79 

power of this victory which overcomes the 
word, amid other fields of the Christian 
conflict, especially in sorrow, suffering 
and death ; and in all it will be found, as 
the hiding of its power, that it bears the 
character already ascribed to it — a reli- 
ance on the all-sufficiency of Christ. In 
every phase and every turning period 
in this conflict, in all those strifes within 
the heart known only to itself and God, 
in bearing the cross of the holy activities 
of religion, and in receiving the whole 
baptism of sorrow which the heavenly 
Father appoints, the truth is made good, 
that " this is the victory that overcometh 
the world, even our faith." From the 
hour of spiritual conversion to that of the 
final departure for glory, it is a faithful 
and joyous truth — how joyous, can never 
be told in the language of earth. 



VII. 

ASSURANCE. 

FIRST — A LAWFUL EXPECTATION. 

fHE fountain of joy which the Saviour 
has opened for his friends is full and 
j overflowing. Why, then, should they 
stint themselves when they come to it for 
supplies ? Why not believe the full 
value of the boon, and honor the bene- 
factor by accepting his generosity pre- 
cisely as it is offered? The believer 
remembers how it was with him on the 
deserts of sin, with no cooling spring at 
hand. He remembers the thirst which 
nothing in those arid regions could as- 
suage. He knew — for it was a felt ex- 
perience — that his soul must drink or 
die ; and what had all this world of sin to 

80 



ASSURANCE. 81 

offer for the relief of such anguish ? That 
which, in the distance, seemed a refresh- 
ing water, was found, on a near approach, 
to be a deceitful mirage; and what 
could he do ? 

A fountain was opened for sin and un- 
cleanness. The voice of eternal Mercy 
cried, " Ho, to the waters!" He listened; 
he approached, knelt and bathed his 
parched lips in the river of salvation. 
Fresh from such an experience of the 
pangs of sin, it ill behooves him to disdain 
the relief from all its terrors which is 
offered in the full assurance that his sins 
are forgiven, and that, through the grace 
which completes what it begins, he, en- 
during to the end, shall be saved. 

This ground is generally approached 
with the most solemn caution by the 
truest Christians. So it should be. Fools 
only would "rush in" here. Concerning 
the matter of personal salvation, the 
loftiest hope to which some dare aspire 



82 UPWARD. 

consists in a sweet reconciliation to all 
the judgments of God, and a willingness 
to leave their souls at his disposal. With 
the king of Israel they say, " Let us fall 
now into the hands of the Lord, for his 
mercies are great." The language of such 
submission is substantially this : I am a 
guilty sinner, hopeless except from the 
mercy of God in Christ Jesus. Without 
Christ for my Advocate and Saviour from 
wrath, I cannot stand a moment in judg- 
ment with God. Out of him, I am a 
doomed victim of eternal justice. All 
that I can do is to renounce sin with 
loathing, yield myself to Christ as my 
Mediator with God, and then strive to 
walk in newness of life. As far as I 
know my own heart, I give myself to the 
Saviour upon his own terms, and, God 
being my helper, I will consecrate my 
ability for usefulness and myself to him. 
I can do no more ; and in the daily doing 
of this I am willing to leave all else with 



ASSURANCE. 83 

God. The Judge of all the earth will do 
right. My care shall terminate in the 
question, What am I to do? and God 
shall then do what he pleases with me. 

This experience reveals an evangelical 
and pleasant state of mind. It speaks 
sweet submission to the Divine govern- 
ment, supreme consecration to the work 
of God, and confidence that the mercy of 
the atonement will be rightly exercised. 
Happy are those who can expose such a 
heart to the scrutiny of the heart-search- 
ing Spirit ! But the question whether this 
experience, submissive and trusting as it 
is, comes up to the proper measure of a 
Christian hope depends upon the answer 
to this further inquiry, Is it all the attain- 
ment which God now proposes to his 
friends? When it is reached, is the 
mission of the Comforter, as described in 
the New Testament, fulfilled ? The soul, 
escaping from the gloom and sorrow of 
sin, should seek the choicest repose which 



84 UPWARD. 

the mercy of God provides. While seek- 
ing our bliss from the comforts of the 
Holy Ghost, nothing is enough, while the 
way is open for the enjoyment of more. 
Inferior attainments are vantage-grounds, 
upon which we should stand and gird 
ourselves to reach unto those things which 
are before. 

We certainly read of " the full assurance 
of hope." 

No attempted exposition has ever been 
able to give to those words any other than 
their most natural meaning — an entire 
confidence of possessing a present and eter- 
nal interest in the blessings of the atone- 
ment. This assured hope is the offspring 
of faith. That faith rests in the Promiser 
as true, and then in the promises as ap- 
plying specifically to the believer. 

A man holds a bank-note. He first 
inquires respecting the character of the 
bank, and becomes satisfied that it may 
be relied on for the redemption of its 



ASSUKANCE. 85 

paper. This resembles that first degree 
of confidence in God, which regards his 
provision for saving all who in true faith 
receive Christ, as full and certain to be 
carried out. In this confidence a man 
may doubt whether he is himself a subject 
of that provision, but he has no doubt that 
every promise of God will be fulfilled. 

The holder of the bank-note next in- 
quires into the genuineness of the particu- 
lar bill in his hand. If on examination 
it does not prove a counterfeit, then he 
feels assured that he holds the promise 
of the bank to himself and he expects to 
enjoy the personal benefit of that promise, 
So the Christian's faith in the general 
promises of redeeming mercy ripens to 
the full assurance of hope when he en- 
joys a sufficiency of evidence that these 
promises apply specifically to his own case, 
as one who comes properly within the 
provisions of the covenant of redemption. 
For then the promises of that covenant 



86 UPWARD. 

are to Jiim personally a pledge. of salva- 
tion.* 

Far be it from us to regard personal 
safety from final wrath as the ultimate 
object of Christian ambition. The sanc- 
tified heart looks beyond all the benefits 
of the cross to the creatures of God, and 
rejoices with unspeakable joy while it be- 
holds all these lesser results conspiring 
to bring glory to Glod, through the service 
and everlasting bliss of a redeemed peo- 
ple. And that is a precious faith which 
enables the Christian, while consecrating 
himself to the whole work laid to his 
hands, to resolve all desires for himself 
into acquiescence in the Divine will. 

* The illustration from the bank-note is suggested by Dr. 
Thomas Scott, who, in his Commentary, adopts a present and 
full assurance of a saving interest in Christ as the meaning 
of the apostle in Hebrews vi. 11. He regards the "assur- 
rance of faith" not "hope" mentioned in Hebrews x. 22, as 
amounting only to the confidence of the bill-holder in the 
responsibility of the bank. The question whether this is not 
too close a limitation of that faith is not pertinent to the 
present work. 



ASSURANCE. 87 

Still, the casting out of fear is essential to 
the highest enjoyment of the hope of 
heaven. Until we feel our views settled 
respecting our own standing in Christ, it 
is hardly possible to conceive of such a 
submission as leaves no room for the 
anxious inquiry, What will be the issue 
of the Divine will in mv case? It would 
seem as if such a question must agitate 
even the saint in glory, notwithstanding- 
all his confidence in the Divine rectitude, 
if there were really any uncertainty about 
his eternal continuance in that world. 
It is true he might be quietly submissive 
— perhaps in the main happily submis- 
sive — but could he close his bosom against 
fear? Yet fear must be expelled before 
the soul will find perfect peace in Christ, 
" because fear hath torment." 

When God, for the quickening of our 
piety, spreads before us the joyous things 
of religion, he does not refer us to quiet 
submission alone. He exhibits HOPE as 



88 UPWARD. 

an anchor fastening the soul to moorings 
within the veil, and he tells of strong 
consolation for those who have fled to the 
refuge of this hope. The vessel anchored 
in the stream is moved by the winds 
and tides, but whichever way she is blown 
or drifted, her prow turns always toward 
the spot to which she is fastened. The 
tempest which disturbs the waters where 
she rides never turns her eyes from the 
place where her anchor is fastened. 

So we lie in the stream of time, await- 
ing the appointed hour to spread our 
sails for the ocean of eternity. God 
means that, in the interval, our hope, 
" as an anchor of the soul, both sure and 
steadfast, and which entereth into that 
within the veil," shall keep our attention 
delightfully engaged on what awaits us 
there. He has given the " hope of salva- 
tion" to be the helmet of the Christian 
warrior, that in all his conflicts with fear 
within and fightings without, he may 



ASSURANCE. 89 

" rejoice in hope of the glory of God," 
and be refreshed and assured of final 
victory. It will be sad for him, if he 
allows the popular prejudice against the 
" full assurance of hope" to score down 
this grace to any lesser power for conso- 
lation than that with which God has 
clothed it. 

But the question whether assurance is, 
in the present life, a fairly attainable 
grace, and therefore a lawful object of ex- 
pectation, is best answered by referring 
to what has actually occurred. When a 
man of God said, " I know that my Re- 
deemer liveth," and then added the ex- 
plicit expression of his perfect confidence 
that he should see him with joy in the 
resurrection, he spoke words to which we 
can attach but one meaning. He had 
the "full assurance of hope." The lan- 
guage of another Bible saint is also un- 
equivocal : "I am persuaded that neither 
death, nor life, nor angels, nor princi- 

8 * 



90 UPWARD. 

palities, nor powers, nor things present, 
nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, 
nor any other creature, shall be able to 
separate us from the love of God, which 
is in Christ Jesus our Lord." The beauty 
of this assurance again glows from another 
earnest testimony from the same Chris- 
tian : "I am now ready to be offered, and 
the time of my departure is at hand. I 
have fought a good fight ; I have finished 
my course ; I have kept the faith ; hence- 
forth there is laid up for me a crown of 
righteousness, which the Lord, the right- 
eous Judge, shall give me at that day." 

These experiences are of unmistakable 
import, and they are examples of many 
others recorded with evident approval by 
the Spirit of inspiration. In relating 
them, no care is used to guard the lan- 
guage with any such qualifying terms as 
might warn the reader against making 
their meaning too positive. The relator 
does not even suggest that his feelings 



ASSURANCE. 91 

are peculiar or rare, but he speaks of 
what he enjoys as we now speak of com- 
mon graces. So when the Apostle John 
tells his brethren that, by loving in deed 
and truth, they shall assure their hearts 
before God, he passes on without pausing 
to modify or explain his words. He does 
not seem to think that he is wandering 
so far from the common track of Chris- 
tian experience that what he says will 
be obscure or surprising. Peter offered 
no apology for presuming to appeal to 
the omniscience of his Lord for the cer- 
tainty of his love. It is evident that, 
when these things were spoken, the cold 
warning to beware of expecting too much 
had not gone abroad. With Christians, 
the full assurance of hope unto the end 
appears to have been a mark for attain- 
ment too common and too well under- 
stood to require explanation. 

It is here worthy of notice that the 
" glimmering" and half-established hope 



92 UPWARD. 

is nowhere in the Bible set up as the 
mark of Christian lowliness of mind or 
of the evangelical feeling of ill-desert. 
The notion which associates them is a man- 
begotten one, if not worse. It is a notion 
which fails to take into account the blood 
of Jesus as prevailing against all the un- 
worthiness of the believer. The Holy 
Scriptures often enjoin upon Christians 
to cherish lowly views of themselves, 
and we read much of this in the experi- 
ence of New Testament saints ; but very 
rarely do we read of one of them as 
cherishing any doubt of his acceptance 
with God. We now hear so much of 
these doubts, as a thing to be expected in 
our religious experience, that it would sur- 
prise many readers to observe how rarefy 
the Word of Grod makes any allusion to 
them. True — and to this we shall soon 
more distinctly refer — it enjoins earnest 
self-examination ; it warns us earnestly 
of the perils of presumption, and it 



ASSURANCE. 93 

reveals the fearful fact that many are ex- 
pecting heaven who will never reach that 
world. But the Holy Spirit has never 
taught us to -infer from this awful truth 
that the hope of assurance is a dangerous 
object of ambition ; neither does our com- 
mon sense require any such conclusion. 
In the New Testament we read much of 
false professors, but we read almost noth- 
ing of doubting or gloomy Christians. 
All its language betrays the expectation 
that the sons of God will be the children 
of peace and joy — that they wall know 
their living Redeemer, and, looking upon 
heaven as their own, will ever pursue 
their pilgrim march thither under un- 
clouded skies. 

The doubt of acceptance obtains all its 
show of modesty from that forced asso- 
ciation with Christian lowliness of mind 
which has been named. Removed from 
this arbitrary association, it stands forth 
as unamiable in itself, as it is unlike the 



94 UPWARD. 

sons of God. If it arises from a dis- 
covery of past sin, it betrays imperfect 
views of the nature and power of redemp- 
tion. If it results from an unsettled 
feeling respecting the question whether 
we have come within the terms of mercy, 
it exhibits the soul lingering over an in- 
quiry which ought to be answered one 
way or the other. It holds its victim to 
a point from which he ought to remove 
at once. If it arises from any appre- 
hension respecting the security of the 
eternal covenant of redemption, it is next 
to infidelity. In any point of view, a 
cherished doubt w r ars against the Chris- 
tian's peace and holiness, and thrusts itself 
between the believer and his Saviour. 

Two things have chilled the ambition 
of many who should now be living in 
one joy of assurance. One is the fear of 
vain glory : the other, the disgust with 
which they have looked upon some 
miserable professions of this attainment. 



ASSURANCE. 95 

But it should be remembered that the 
belief of possessing large measures of 
Divine influence makes only hypocrites 
proud. Such there always have been, 
and will be for long years to come. It 
pleases Grod to try his own children, by 
allowing such persons to expose religion 
to shame ; and the endurance of this re- 
proach is a part of the patience of the 
saints. Great sanctity and positive hopes, 
with- no better evidence than " Thus I 
feel" or, " Thus I was told in a vision with 
a great flood of light" will be professed 
by men who afford no rational proof of 
one godly exercise. Such persons will be 
proud, vain boasters, whose influence will 
mortify Christians and subject the cause 
of Christ to disaster. 

But when the Redeemer's true friends 
allow themselves to trifle with valuable 
privileges because these empty boasts are 
so loathsome, they give to bad men a 
power over their own experience which 



96 UPWARD. 

properly belongs to the Holy Spirit alone. 
They allow sinners to prescribe the meas- 
ure of their own attainments. There is 
nothing in grace to make its subject vain- 
glorious. We scandalize the Spirit when 
we shrink from accepting its highest com- 
forts through fear that they will turn us 
into silly braggarts. Standing in Christ, 
where alone undeserving sinners enjoy 
the hopes of the covenant, deeper hu- 
mility results from each fresh discovery 
of God's favor to us. As grace after 
grace, poured without stint into the soul, 
brings out the cry, " What peace! what 
bliss!" it just as inevitably awakens the 
reflection, " Upon how unworthy an object 
is it bestowed!" No others are so sure of 
God's eternal love as the already glori- 
fied spirits : no others, with so profound 
a disclaiming of personal worthiness, look- 
ing up to the enthroned Redeemer, 

" Spread their trophies at his feet, 
And crown him Lord of all." 



VIII. 

ASSURANCE. 
SECOND — THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT. 

'V'O inspired writer's language bears 
A more the appearance of well-con- 
^J sidered meaning than that of Paul. 
There is no reason for divesting the term 
of its exact sense, when he says to the 
Corinthian brethren (2d Epist. chap, v.), 
" We know that if our earthly house of 
this tabernacle were dissolved, Ave have a 
building of God, a house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." No other 
insight which his epistles afford to his 
experience will justify us in grading this 
confidence as a merely comparative one, 
or anything less than absolute. 

9 G 97 



98 UPWARD. 

And yet our knowledge of him and of 
ourselves — of him as one of ourselves — 
forbids the thought that this assurance 
was the product of his own mind', or was 
reached through his own ordinary reason- 
ing faculties alone. The power is not in 
us to come to so certain a conclusion con- 
cerning our moral condition. Our self- 
consciousness, our judgment and our 
faculties throughout are too finite, too in- 
firm and too often convicted of mistake 
to render a confidence thus begotten any- 
thing less than a daring presumption. 
To be in any of us what it was in 
Paul, it must be something of communi- 
cation to our minds, something brought in, 
something wrought into a certainty by 
the Infallible Mind, and communicated 
to ours with the Divine signature. We 
need no more lucid description of this 
wonderful revelation than that in Romans 
viii. 16, written also by Paul : " The 
Spirit itself beareth witness with our 



ASSURANCE. 99 

spirit, that we are the children of 
God." 

Turning again to the assurance ex- 
pressed in the first quotation above, and 
reading a little farther, we find the sup- 
port to which this " we know" is fastened. 
" Now he that hath wrought us for the 
selfsame thing is God, who also hath given 
unto us the earnest of the Spirit. There- 
fore we are always confident." In the 
earnest of a possession there are involved 
the two elements of some present fore- 
taste and an expectation of the future en- 
joyment of the whole. Such was the 
cluster of grapes brought by the spies 
from Canaan to the anxious multitude in 
the wilderness. It assured the people 
that Canaan was no fiction ; that there 
lay the land to which God was leading 
them ; and it gave them a foretaste of its 
fruits. So while the Comforter gives to 
the believer's soul the expectation of 
future glory, it brings down many ante- 



100 UPWAKD. 

pasts of the joy which there awaits him — 
" celestial fruits on earthly ground." 

But let us not, because of the commu- 
nicative origin of the hope of assurance, 
make it too exclusively miraculous, or re- 
lease our reasoning powers from all duty 
concerning it, and straiten it to an opera- 
tion on the feelings alone. God meant 
that the testimony of the Spirit should 
join in with some co-operating power 
within us for reaching conclusions. The 
Spirit must bear witness with our spirit 
— a conference of testimony — and thus the 
conclusion be made satisfying to us. But 
if satisfying, it must be something that 
is explicit. We are not to become mere 
imbeciles in the act of casting ourselves 
with unbounded reliance upon hopes for 
the eternal world; but what less are we 
if we utterly discard the reflective facul- 
ties, and venture all upon the impressions 
of the moment? There are other spirits 
besides that of God which have power 



ASSUKANCE. 101 

to impress the human feelings. It would 
be a criminal folly to stake a hope of sal- 
vation upon the bare fact that something 
brought the word to our hearts that all 
is well. In commanding us to "try the 
spirits, whether they are of Grod," our 
heavenly Father has not left us without 
the means of subjecting the work of his 
own Spirit to the scrutiny of the common 
rules of evidence. He allows the opera- 
tions of the Spirit to be examined in the 
light of our understanding, at least so far 
as to enable us, when satisfied that we 
really enjoy its earnest, "to give an an- 
swer to every man that asketh a reason 
of the hope that is in us." 

There is here no inconsistency with the 
higher truth that there are transactions 
between the Divine Spirit and the soul 
which can never come under human 
modes of explanation. The things of 
Christ ^are showed to the divinely-illu- 
minated heart with ineffable clearness 

9* 



102 UPWARD. 

and by a process which cannot be de- 
scribed. The Spirit's witness for the be- 
liever that he is a child of God is im- 
mediate with his own spirit. The earnest 
of heaven which it affords consists in 
the direct communication of celestial views 
to his mind and the feelings of the glo- 
rified to his heart. 

Yet even this spiritual intercourse is not 
through vague impressions, which admit 
of no external proof of their genuineness. 
The Spirit performs other offices which 
the understanding can estimate ; and that 
part of his work which is observable is 
made an indispensable evidence that we 
are under his power. He is the author of 
the word of divine inspiration. In that 
volume of revelation the Spirit describes 
the way by which a sinner comes to Christ : 
Did we come by that new and living way ? 
There he convinces of sin : Have our 
souls bowed in sorrow under the burden 
of guilt ? He convinces of righteousness 



ASSURANCE. 103 

and of judgment : In the light of God's 
holy government have we sought our 
justification in Christ alone, and have we 
fled to his atonement for refuge from final 
wrath ? The Spirit exhibits a list of Chris- 
tian characteristics which afford evidence 
of his work in the heart : Are these fruits 
found in our own character and lives ? 
As men, are we honest, unselfish, self- 
controlling, gentle, and faithful to the 
calls of humanity? As Christians, are 
we prayerful, humble, crucified to the 
world, free to meet the calls upon our 
Christian benevolence, self-denying in 
our Saviour's service, in sympatic with 
the institutions of the Church, in love 
with the brethren and walking with 
God? Is this frame of mind habitual, 
and is it developed in our common in- 
tercourse with the world ? 

The list of rational evidences might be 
extended much farther. They are tests 
which the Spirit itself has furnished in 



104 UPWARD. 

its own book of truth and duty. It bears 
its testimony for them, that they are true, 
gracious traits. By spreading before us 
so many comprehensible points for self- 
examination, it affords such witness of 
piety in the soul as the common judgment 
can approve. When through the truth it 
has borne such testimony toward sustain- 
ing a hope of heaven, the way is prepared 
to accept without distrust the higher wit- 
ness which it bears with the heart. The 
internal impression is then known as 
true, because the Spirit has been tried, 
and has been found to speak as God 
speaks in his revealed word. The union 
of the Spirit's outward rational evidence 
and its inwrought witness with the be- 
liever's spirit removes the last vestige of 
condemning fear, and his confidence be- 
comes implicit and imperishable. 

An assurance gained and preserved 
only upon such conditions can never 
admit of carelessness respecting self-ex- 



ASSURANCE. 105 

amination. It is a mistake to suppose 
that self-examination necessarily implies 
the existence of doubt. There is no evi- 
dence, either from the Scriptures in con- 
nection or from any other source, that 
Paul's confidence had faltered, when he 
spoke of bringing his body into sub- 
jection, " lest by any means, when I have 
preached to others, I myself should be a 
castaway." There is no absurdity in 
imagining an angel often looking over 
the tenure by which he holds his place 
in Paradise, and deriving pleasure from 
reviewing the ground on which he stands. 
So the assured Christian will consider the 
experience of his heart, and the whole 
working of the justifying and sanctifying 
grace within him, to be refreshed by the 
Spirit's approbation of it all. The con- 
templation of hopes thus sustained in- 
volves the review of all the evidences 
which sustain them. The assurance of 
hope, viewed in this light, secures a con- 



106 UPWARD. 

stant heart-watch, and there is no dan- 
ger that its enjoyment will render self- 
examination a farce. The same view 
removes the apprehension that it will 
promote carelessness respecting active 
duty. It is maintained in duty, and the 
Spirit lifts up its accusing voice against 
every sinful neglect. More than this, 
joy and love are stronger incentives to 
well-doing than fear. The more these 
are shed abroad in the soul, so much 
the more the Christian will watch and 
pray, and so much the better he will 
live. 

Through such earnest and witness the 
believer learns to recognize the whispers 
of the Spirit in his soul, " Be of good 
cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee;" "I 
have called thee by name; thou art 
mine." Persuaded that this unclouded 
expectation of heaven is a real and at- 
tainable grace, and that, when possessed, 
it imparts more celestial joy than is ever 



ASSURANCE. 107 

experienced in its absence, we again ask 
ourselves why we should abridge the 
privilege which the covenant of grace 
opens? Whatever heavenly good our 
Lord sets before us, he wishes us to 
enjoy and expects us to seek. He knows 
best what comforts are most appropriate 
for us this side of the veil, and all the 
repose to which he invites us is safe. 

It is a poor satisfaction to be told that 
assurance may be an attainable grace, but 
it is not to be expected in one case out of 
a thousand. We have too long measured 
our expectations by the spiritual experi- 
ence current since the departure of the in- 
tense consecration of primitive Chris- 
tianity. We look back to the times of 
Jesus on earth and of his apostles, and 
we find it assumed in all their instruc- 
tions that this strong consolation was to 
be a prevalent solace in the Church. 
Neither do we find comfort in being told 
that the Christian may reach this assur- 



108 UPWARD. 

ance before he dies, but if so it is proba- 
bly in store for a few of his last moments 
on earth — the dying grace for a dying 
hour. Such speculations do more than 
chill us ; they seem to trifle with the fixed 
arrangements and conditions of our ex- 
istence. They make a third state of 
being between the present and the eter- 
nal, as if the last moments of life were 
not subject to the same reason and laws 
of evidence with those which preceded 
them. It is true that God has peculiar 
consolations for seasons of peculiar need ; 
and this fact is often vividly realized 
in the hour when heart and flesh are 
failing. But nowhere this side of heaven 
are we to expect a revelation of new 
principles of judgment or new evidences 
of piety, beyond those which are now 
within our reach. 

Then be it ours to find our highest 
rest of soul where others have found it — 
rest from all feeling of condemnation 



ASSURANCE. 109 

now, and all apprehension of it to come, 

because we know that our Redeemer 

liveth, and we expect to be satisfied when 

we awake with his likeness. 
10 




IX. 

LOVE. 

FIRST THE CHIEF GRACE. 

'HOULD we look no farther than its 
power for joy unspeakable we should 
still unhesitatingly adopt the apostle's 
grading, which ranks love as the highest 
in the triad of graces. What a new 
world of holy tranquillity is revealed in 
the experience which proves that " there 
is no fear in love, but perfect love casteth 
out fear, because fear hath torment!" 

The influence of conscience in affording 

serenity or anguish has been mentioned ; 

but that does not bring us up to the mark 

of the power of our affections for joy or 

sorrow. Peace of conscience is indeed a 

delightful attainment: joy to the recon- 
110 



LOVE. Ill 

ciled offender who can lay his hand on 
his breast and say, It is mine ! But we 
must rise higher than that. For the pain 
or pleasure which flows to us through the 
working of the natural conscience is not 
inherent in the faculty itself. Conscience 
is simply an index pointing us to some- 
thing outside of itself, as the occasion of 
the distress or comfort which it gives. 
It produces remorse or peace, not by draw- 
ing upon its own nature, but by assuring 
us that God is angry or complacent. But 
the affections are, in themselves, full of 
joy or grief — a well-spring of comfort or 
a boiling sea of torment. Love, if it be 
right and happily requited, imparts bliss 
from its own nature. On the other hand, 
it is in the very nature of improper affec- 
tions to produce misery in the heart 
which cherishes them. 

Selfishness affords a striking example 
of this. It closes the heart against the 
noble sentiment of universal brotherhood 



112 TJPWAED. 

and excites bitter envy in view of the 
happiness of others. By arraigning the 
interest of its subject against that of the 
rest of mankind, it keeps him on the 
rack of apprehension, where he trembles 
to trust any of his kind. Love, that 
richest treasure of the heart, is exhausted 
in self-interest ; and the inevitable conse- 
quence of this misapplying of affection 
is seen in coldness of heart and sourness 
of temper, sometimes concealed under a 
false affability, but often acted out in un- 
disguised moroseness. Here is displeas- 
ure in the happiness of others, a nervous 
dread of mankind, a locking of the soul 
against human sympathy and an asperity 
of spirit, expressed by unamiable con- 
duct or concealed under the fretting 
mask of hypocrisy. If these do not con- 
stitute a life of pain, then rest may be 
enjoyed on a bed of thorns. 

But it is not alone in the bad affections 
that the power of love for sorrow as well 



LOVE. 113 

as joy is illustrated. Those human fond- 
nesses which are lawful, and, in them- 
selves, even virtuous and adapted to the 
purest earthly joy, often become the very 
steepings of the cup of anguish ; and 
this fact suggests one of the most vivid 
views of the superior excellence of that 
love of Grod which the Spirit sheds abroad 
in the sanctified heart — the perfect love 
which casts out fear and has no torment. 
Look at one who has expended all the 
fondness of a true and trusting heart 
upon some object which at last betrays 
the adoring love which it has secured, 
and requites a long and earnest attach- 
ment with unfeeling scorn. The first 
knowledge of this perfidy falls like a 
thunderbolt on the heart, and it is often 
followed by consuming grief which longs 
to hide itself in the grave. 

And even where love is well placed 
and well requited we have seen mournful 

exemplications of the same truth, that 

10 * h 



114 UPWARD. 

the purest and happiest earthly affections 
often become the source of unspeakable sor- 
row. The dearest human delights which 
the fall has left to our race are gathered 
around the altars of home. They live in 
the smiles, the tenderness and the thous- 
and nameless endearments of the hearth- 
stone. There the heart of care loves to 
unburden itself and be at peace. Thither 
stern manhood retires from the irritating 
conflicts of life, and, for a little while, 
exchanges the conflicts without for the 
love within. There the child buries his 
face in his mother's bosom, weeps his 
little grief away and looks up all radiant 
with happiness. There is the highest 
illustration which the world affords of 
the power of the natural affections for 
producing human bliss. 

And there, beyond all other places 
else, exists the mournful proof that their 
strength for sorrow is exactly commen- 
surate with their strength for joy. The 



LOVE. 115 

mother, watching the expiring life of her 
infant ; the child, standing by the dying 
bed of his last earthly parent, and, when 
all is over, shying away to a corner and, 
under the first overwhelming shock of 
orphanage, sobbing as if his little heart 
would break ; the wife — a wife no more — 
standing by the grave where they are 
putting into darkness him for whose sake 
she loved to live and be happy : these 
can tell us too truly that the depth of 
their love makes the depth of their grief. 
Had they loved less they would sorrow 
less. 

Discovering in our own moral natures 
the necessity for both the inflow and out- 
flow of fond affection, and witnessing so 
much sorrow in the train of human at- 
tachments, how refreshing is the revela- 
tion of a love which is ever joyous and 
satisfying, because it is planted, nurtured, 
shed abroad, by the Holy Spirit in the 
heart ! We yield to this influence with- 



116 UPWARD. 

out fear of ill-requital, without dread of 
losing the objects of our delight, and 
without any apprehension that we are 
preparing the way for trials by allowing 
our affections to become too intense. The 
bliss w T hich it affords our spirits is in 
proportion to the fullness of its in- 
dwelling. When it becomes perfect it 
will cast out all fear. To the serenity 
of the pacified conscience we give the 
name of peace. The pleasure which 
divine love inspires is better expressed 
by the term bliss. Wielding all the 
power for happiness which the affection 
of human love possesses, and then, by 
linking itself to the Divine nature, ethe- 
realizing both itself and its fruits, it is no 
longer an earthly, but a heavenly princi- 
ple ; no more a human, but an immortal 
sentiment, ripening the soul for the ec- 
stasy of heaven. 

In its manifestations it has variety, 
but in its substance, unity. In all its de- 



LOVE. 117 

velopments it is " one and the selfsame 
Spirit" throughout. In the form of be- 
nevolence it may be felt for those in 
whom no delightful traits can be dis- 
covered. This was the Master's love for 
Jerusalem — sorrow for the sinner's guilt 
and compassion for his doom. As broth- 
erly love, it unites the believer to all who 
have part with himself in the communion 
of the saints with Gocl. Like the knit- 
ting of souls between David and Jonathan, 
Christian fellowship makes us one with 
all who belong to Christ, whether the 
militant on earth or the triumphant in 
heaven. 

But the term complacency expresses the 
most exalted form of holy love. This 
speaks delight in the contemplation of 
what is truly lovely — delight in all the 
holy, created or uncreated — delight in all 
holiness and holy happiness. Even that 
commiserating love justmentioned springs 
from this delight, because it is pity for 



118 UPWARD. 

those who are strangers to such happi- 
ness. From thence this heart for all that 
is worthy of love passes on to become a 
living sympathy with the happiness of 
all who draw their joys from Christ — in 
other words, it becomes love to the 
brethren. These are but parts of the one 
complacent affection with which renewed 
souls gaze upon whatever is lovely, happy 
and holy throughout the universe, and 
which is consummated in love to Christ 
— love to God. 

We have our highest view of it when 
we reflect upon its Source. It flows in 
the heart of God. The Holy Scriptures 
say of him, not merely that he is lovely 
and deserving of love, or that he is the 
Author and Dispenser of love, but they 
make of this grace one of the vitalities 
of his being: " God is Love. As when, 
assuming the expressive name, " I am," 
he impersonated universal existence, so 
when we hear him proclaimed as one who 



LOVE. 119 

is Love, we think of all existing loveli- 
ness as part and essence of himself. 
" He that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in 
God, and God in him." Even those 
awful attributes to which we ascribe his 
dealings of wrath are the necessary re- 
sult of his complacency in holy happi- 
ness. If he had less delight in such 
happiness, he might be less severe against 
its hindering cause, sin. 

In bringing us to become partakers of 
this grace, God incorporates in our spirit- 
ual natures an elementary portion, of 
his own. He fills us with the fullness of 
himself, and we feel the new man within 
us to be a Divine effluence. To possess 
the love of God is to be born of God. 
The Holy Ghost sheds it abroad in our 
hearts, and , then it affords us in our 
capacity such delight as it gives to God 
in his. 

There is for the believer this pe- 
culiar joy in his apprehension of the 



120 UPWAED. 

love of God, that he feels it individual- 
izing himself. It appears before him, not 
alone in the general aspect of a com- 
placency in all that is good and happy, 
but his faith beholds in it the sentiment 
of his heavenly Father toward himself. 
It has been mentioned that longings for 
love are an instinct of the human heart, 
and also that only requited love yields 
pleasure. jSTo complacency in others 
could answer the demand of our nature, 
while we felt that toward ourselves all 
were cold. The regenerate person carries 
into the new field for his affections all 
these desires to become the object of love. 
Indeed, in that new field these desires 
are intensified by his consciousness of the 
purer nature of that love which he now 
longs to receive. 

And it is in this field that the yearn- 
ings of his spirit are met and filled. 
His view wanders delighted over the 
boundless extent of worlds and beings on 



LOVE. 121 

which his heavenly Father smiles, but 
the thrilling experience of his heart is 
that of God's especial affection for him- 
self. He is bowed in grateful humility 
and in wonder that the Majesty of the 
universe can draw so near to so mean a 
thing, while he listens to the testimony 
of the Spirit : " Since thou wast precious 
in my sight, thou hast been honorable 
and I have loved thee." It comes again 
— what joy dwells in the sound ! — " I love 
them that love me." The Spirit who 
whispers this witness in his ear breathes 
it into his heart. Then he is satisfied 
with the reciprocity of affection between 
himself and God ; and such love, meeting 
with such a requital, answers the highest 
demand of his new-born nature. 

There is a point of still higher interest 
in God's particular regard for the believer. 
It belongs to the grand system which was 
formed for the recovery of a lost world. 

It comes in the death and intercession of 
11 



122 UPWARD. 

the Redeemer, and through that death 
and intercession it is bestowed upon an 
unworthy but repentant sinner. Viewed 
in this light, it becomes the love of Christ. 
Before the cross all our thoughts of Di- 
vine love are tender and subduing. The 
atonement, through which the sinner 
becomes justified, blesses him with the 
first complacent smile of his Maker. 
His Redeemer's mediation presents him 
before the throne as an object of heav- 
enly regard. The Holy Spirit's sanctify- 
ing work in his soul clothes him with 
those attributes of loveliness which win 
the Divine heart. He beholds his Sa- 
viour cheered amid his toils and trials, 
and sustained under the endurance of 
Divine wrath, by the consciousness that 
he was performing the highest labor of 
love : " Having loved his own which 
were in the world, he loved them unto 
the end." He listens, and all is made 
right and happy for himself and in him- 



LOVE. 123 

self, while he hears the ever-living in- 
tercession of Jesus for his friends — "that 
they might have my joy fulfilled in them- 
selves; that the love wherewith thou hast 
loved me may be in them, and I in them." 
This is God's own love. It is the well- 
spring of those streams which, flowing 
into the believer's soul, become his love, 
good and glorious in accordance with the 
goodness and glory of the Fountain which 
issues it. Faith is tranquilizing, happy 
and good. So is hope, and so is every grace. 
But "the greatest of these is Love." 




X. 

LOVE. 

SECOND — ITS SCOPE. 

ijrlELDS for the range of holy affec- 
jj tions are ever open. In no one of 
j its manifestations can sanctified love 
become languid for the want of interest- 
ing objects upon which to bestow itself. 
In this world the calls for our benevo- 
lence are incessant. The whole creation 
groans and travails in pain. High-handed 
wrong usurps the place of justice, and 
cruelty reigns where mercy should be en- 
throned. For all this God feels, and he 
will have us feel. Against this he directs 
the whole course of his active providence, 
and he expects us to labor as well as feel 
with himself. 

124 



LOVE. 125 

The general misery which sin brings 
upon the world is made up of unnum- 
bered instances of individual suffering. 
Multitudes of these are brought to our 
own door. The poor we have always 
with us. Around us the helpless are 
needing help, the desponding are asking 
for cheer, and the mourners are looking 
about for comfort. Pointing us to each 
call upon our benevolence, God informs 
us exactly how we may judge whether his 
own feeling for the children of sorrow 
dwells in our breasts. " Whoso hath 
this world's good, and seeth his brother 
have need, and shutteth up his bowels of 
compassion from him, how dwelleth the 
love of God in him!" The neglect of 
the offices of humanity is given as one 
decisive proof that the heart is a stranger 
to God. And we are to be weighed in 
the same balances at the final judgment. 
Christ, there enthroned as the arbiter of 

our eternal destinies, will exhibit the 
11* 



126 UPWARD. 

hungry, th6 thirsty, the houseless wan- 
derer, the naked, the sick and the im- 
prisoned — all those in whose cases love 
to himself should have been expressed— 
and the dread accusation against such as 
turned coldly from the sufferers will be, 
u Ye did it not to me." 

Think, too, of the call for our compas- 
sion toward the enemies of God. The 
Divine heart bleeds over their infatua- 
tion. God's call to them is the mournful 
pleading of a father with a wandering 
son, wdiom he knows not how to abandon 
to profligacy and ruin. We behold the 
tears of the Redeemer for lost souls ; we 
see, in the sorrows of his death, the 
evidence that all which he spoke was felt 
in his heart; and then we know how we 
must feel, and what we must do, if we 
share the spirit of Christ. We too must 
mourn over sinners who are rushing upon 
ruin. More than this, we must gird our- 
selves for cheerful self-denials, for warm 



LOVE. 127 

personal effort and for a generous par- 
ticipation in every enterprise which is 
adapted to their recovery. And when 
was ever an opportunity wanting for the 
exercise of love to the brethren? This 
fraternal affection is, in a peculiar sense, 
vhe fruit of our Lord's dying love, and is 
hence proclaimed as the new command- 
ment of the gospel. The special attrac- 
tion which draws believers, as such, to- 
ward each other, seems to have been less 
distinctly felt under the previous dispen- 
sation, when the Jew loved his fellow 
Jew more on account of their national 
affinity than because they were heirs to 
the same heaven. In the New Testa- 
ment we find the clearer recognition of 
brotherly love as created by our oneness 
in God. There we listen to that wondrous 
intercession of our Advocate, which dis- 
closed some beauties of grace new to the 
world — "That they all maybe one; as 
thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that 



128 UPWAKD. 

they may be one in us ; that the world 
may believe that thou hast sent me." 

We often speak of " celestial fruits on 
earthly ground" and of " heaven begun 
below." In this experience of love to the 
brethren such a foretaste is well identified. 
Cold and sadly deficient in the best par- 
ticipations of grace is the soul of him 
who feels no thrill in the thought that 

" The fellowship of kindred minds 
Is like to that above." 

In our daily walks we meet with those 
who are fellow-pilgrims to the city of 
God. Their hopes, their object of life, 
and their love, are the same as our own. 
We mourn the same sinfulness, we look 
to the same atonement, we rejoice in the 
same forgiveness, we burn with the same 
purified ambitions, and we live the same 
new life. These communings are the 
refreshing arbors along the steep of Chris- 
tian toil, where the pilgrim reposes for a 



LOVE. 129 

season and feels his brow fanned by the 
gales of heaven. 

The delights of this fraternal love need 
not be so much marred, as we are apt to 
think they must be, by the imperfections 
of our fellow-Christians. Holy affection 
exhibits its glory and strength in triumph- 
ing over such causes of disturbance. Its 
influence over our hearts is then more 
observable, and more honorable to re- 
ligion, than it probably would have been 
had it shined in no such darkness. When 
this celestial spirit is beheld walking into 
the arena of religious controversies or 
personal strifes, with their angry excite- 
ments, and stilling the tempest with the 
magic reflection, Ye are brethren! then 
the w r orld beholds it armed with the 
strength of God and glowing in the 
beauty of heaven. 

On this point the Church has not re- 
ceived the fair award of justice. She 
enjoys more of the happiness of brotherly 



130 UPWARD. 

love than her enemies credit her with — 
more even than her friends have always 
claimed for her. It is not denied that 
she has been rent by discords and some- 
times deeply agitated by contending pas- 
sions. For these sad outbreaks of moral 
obliquity much is due to men of no piety, 
deceivers and self-deceived, who have en- 
tered her visible organization and ob- 
tained her confidence. Their zeal for 
points or parties, even when furious, has 
been mistaken by others, and perhaps by 
themselves, for Christian attachment to 
principle. These are spots in our feasts 
of charity for which God will not, and 
men ought not to judge us, any farther 
than as we submit to their corrupt in- 
fluence. Not a few who are, in the main, 
friends of Christ, are also implicated in 
these scenes of strife, and the reproach 
which has followed their influence cannot 
be denied. 

But people forget that the discordant 



LOVE. 131 

aspects of the Christian family are always 
the most obvious, and most likely to be 
observed through a magnifying medium. 
The report of the bitter speech of one 
Christian against his fellow-disciple will 
spread for leagues, while the sweet ex- 
pression of fellowship is often not heard 
beyond the room where it is spoken. The 
controversies of the true Church are, like 
the surgings of the sea, on the surface. 
Beneath them is a silent and smooth 
under-current, always of the same ele- 
ment and flowing in the same direction. 
The excitements of the first are occa- 
sional, often impulsive and always con- 
spicuous. The last is the quiet flood of 
the river of God, less striking to the 
superficial observer, but for ever enjoyed. 
Every heart in which Divine love truly 
dwells flows in that flow and joins in the 
universal sentiment of the redeemed — 
one hope, one labor, one spirit, one Head 
and one home. 



132 UPWAKD. 

What anticipations are awakened by 
our present faint experience of this fel- 
lowship! Expecting the hour when the 
redeemed shall sing with the voice to- 
gether, because they see eye to eye, how 
the earnest cry sometimes ascends, " Lord, 
why are thy chariots so long in coming ? 
Why tarry the wheels of thy chariots? 7 ' 

The crowning feature of this holy love 
is, that its scope embraces both earth and 
heaven. We have seen that it ranges 
delighted among the lovely ones of earth, 
whom we meet from day to day. But 
faith brings us into the presence of beings 
of infinitely superior worth, for there is 
no blemish in them, and our delight in 
them is unqualified. Communion with 
God seems, for the time, to remove our 
souls from earth to heaven. Among the 
spirits who fill that world are the great 
company of the redeemed, who were as 
we are, and who are as we soon shall be. 
There are some of our dearly beloved 



LOVE. 133 

ones, who could not abide our slow steps 
and so hastened before us to glory. Hand 
in hand we performed our pilgrimage 
for a short season, and the remembrance 
of those communings prompts our souls 
to make frequent ascensions up the ladder 
of vision to the land of the immortals. 
We see their white robes ; they seem to 
beckon us with their smile — 

" Come away to the skies, 
My beloved, arise ;" 

we listen to the music of their harps of 
gold; we behold their dwelling-place in 
light unapproachable and full of glory ; 
and then we feel that our holy affections 
can never die for the want of something 
good to love. 

The same faith brings us into the pres- 
ence of angels, cherubim and seraphim, 
those morning stars which sang together, 
and those sons of God who shouted for 
joy when our world sprang into being. 

12 



134 UPWARD. 

They have enjoyed an existence of unin- 
terrupted holiness ; they have numbered 
ages of service in ministering to the 
honor of the throne of heaven ; and they 
have found what is always to be found, 
even on this earth, growing felicity in 
each new hour of consecration. 

There also we look upon that face 
which is the brightness of the Father's 
glory. The eye of faith, looking through 
the veil of sense, beholds now enough of 
Christ to excite strong yearnings for the 
unclouded view of him, " whom having 
not seen, we love ; in whom though we 
see him not, yet believing we rejoice with 
joy unspeakable and full of glory." And 
there too is the self-existing Author of 
this unspeakable bliss, enjoying love, im- 
parting love and himself being love. 
Surrounded by those throngs of the ran- 
somed and those angelic " living ones," 
and having in himself all the glorious- 
ness of the Father, the Jesus, Saviour, 



LOVE. 135 

and the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier, he is the 
one everlasting object of contemplation 
upon which we may feast for ever. 

Thus, in those hours when the soul 
shuts itself in from this world and looks 
through the glass of faith into that which 
is unseen and eternal, as the picture of 
an entire heaven offering itself to our 
love unrolls itself, presenting view after 
view, rising in interest and delight, our 
weak sight soon reaches the point beyond 
which it cannot go until we see as we are 
seen and know as we are known. But 
the present span of our vision is wide 
enough, and its aggregate of objects large 
enough, to suffice for any longing this 
side of heaven. Our spiritual arithmetic 
gives the numbers — Mount Zion, the city 
of the living God, the heavenly Jerusa- 
lem, the innumerable company of angels, 
the general assembly and churcli of the 
first-born, God the Judge of all, the spirits 
of just men made perfect, Jesus the Me- 



136 UPWAKD. 

diator of the new covenant, and the blood 
of sprinkling. We add up the column 
and the sum is Love. 

Casting out all fear, filling our strongest 
yearnings for affection, incorporating our 
natures with the happy nature of God 
himself, clinging to us with a hold which 
neither death nor life nor any other crea- 
ture of God can unloose, and enriching 
all its other blessings by constantly draw- 
ing us nearer to Calvary and Mount 
Zion, what a sanctuary for the soul is 
love ! What light and blessings it sheds 
upon the hour when death shall loosen 
the soul for its flight to the home of all 
holy affection ! The believer, led by its 
soft guidance, approaches the shore where 
he can hear the voices of the songs from 
beyond the river. They adore, they 
sing, they shout ; but high above all, and 
through the eternal age, they Love. 



XL 

THE SERVICE OF DOING. 

FIRST INCITEMENTS. 

fHAT is a false religion which is laid 
hold of only for the sake of its hope 
for the world to come. There can be 
no greater mistake concerning the intent 
of the death of Christ toward the re- 
deemed than to suppose it meant only 
for their deliverance from future misery. 
The grace which brings salvation does 
not subordinate God to us but us to him ; 
and that is a selfish estimate of its mean- 
ing which would make it read, Every- 
thing for us : nothing from us. A lively 
hope of heaven is a fair result of vital 
religion — nothing more. The elementary 

feature of such religion — that without 
12 * 137 



138 UPWAED. 

which it has no reality of existence — is 
consecration. Its possessor has made the 
solemn consecration of himself to God, 
and this consecration is for both worlds — 
the life that now is as well as the life 
to come. The moral condition of the 
world gives to this consecration a definite 
and tangible import. It brings it out 
from the region of abstract sentiment 
and places it in concrete relation to the 
work of Grod in the world. In direct 
terms it means work. Personal effort, 
such as devising, toiling, praying, giving, 
and all up to the point of such sacrifice of 
selfish interests as will be felt, is implied. 
Not merely first in time, but, all through 
life, first in order of effort, the Christian 
seeks the kingdom of heaven and its 
righteousness. 

It lies in the nature of a true Christian 
consecration that this service should be a 
cheerful one. The whole life, its anxieties, 
ambitions, bent of activities and delight 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 139 

in the results of living, lias taken its spirit 
from the cross. In the feeling insepara- 
ble from a true experience of grace from 
the cross, that " for me to live is Christ," 
the service in which consecration is car- 
ried out, rises from the character of a cold 
duty to a delightful aspiration for fellow- 
ship with Jesus. This view of it is pecu- 
liarly vivid in the light of his example. 
There is a motto for the Christian life in 
his w r ords, " I must work the works of 
him that sent me while it is day; the 
night cometh when no man can work." 
He said this in his assumed human nature 
— the " form of a servant" which he " took 
upon himself" — a nature in which he 
could be felt by us as an example. It 
was a nature capable of toils ; capable of 
feeling that they were toils ; susceptible 
of their wearing influence upon manly 
energy and susceptible of the oppression 
of spirit w r hich they sometimes produce. 
With him work was no less work than 



140 UPWARD. 

with us. Fatigue of body and faintness 
of spirit were as real with him as with 
us. With as full an experience of these 
things of humanity as was ever felt in 
this world, he expressed his sense of the 
life-long service due to the Father, and 
his purpose, as an appointed worker, 
whose task, like the task of a hireling, 
was set to work out his whole day, for 
the night was coming on. 

True, it is not for us to do the one great 
work which was his more special mission 
in the world — that of dying a sacrificial 
death for the sins of men ; but we are to 
work for the same great end — the salva- 
tion of sinners through that atonement. 
Our Lord has not called certain classes 
only of his redeemed friends into the 
activities of his service; he has left his 
example for all, giving to all the grace to 
do and spreading out work abundant for 
all. It may be found in the pulpit, the 
Sabbath-school, the parish, in supplying 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 141 

and sending forth ambassadors of the 
cross everywhere, among the neglected 
and suffering, in all the highways and by- 
ways of life, and in every appointed 
means for reforming and blessing the 
world. It is work which requires a sur- 
render of carnal ease, toil, willing endu- 
rance and sometimes exposure to re- 
proach, but it is work which cannot be 
put off without imperiling the hope of 
heaven. There is no exception to our 
Lord's everlasting law, " Whosoever doth 
not bear his cross, and come after me, 
cannot be my disciple." The toils and 
exposures under which our consecration 
to God lays us, are only sharing with 
Jesus the burdens of the service. When 
he spoke the words we have quoted, he 
recognized for himself no more constancy 
in duty than is binding on us, and men- 
tioned no motive that does not apply, 
in its full strength, to our case. Works 
of as high and eternal interest as those 



142 UPWARD. 

which brought him to earth are set be- 
fore us. To us also the night cometh — 
the night when no man can work. 

"We turn from the example of Jesus 
living in the world, to the power of his 
death in the believer. Reference has 
already been made to the fact that it bears 
just as explicitly upon a working, Chris- 
tian life as upon the final blessedness of 
heaven. Cursory views of the grace of 
the cross generally pass over the first and 
rest upon the last of these results of the 
atonement in the believer. They look 
only for the crown and never for the 
cross. But a thoughtful view of our 
Lord's death sweeps the wider scope of 
its bearing and sees not only what it is 
to do for the pardoned sinner, but also 
what the love of Christ constrains that 
sinner himself to do for his fellow-sin- 
ners, and more especially for the Lord 
who died for him. 

With New Testament saints, this last 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 143 

was much the most prominent part of the 
theme of the cross. So Paul spoke his 
own experience of its power when he 
wrote of filling up, in his own flesh, that 
which is behind of the afflictions of 
Christ, for the sake of his body, which is 
the Church. In other words, he looked 
not upon Christ as the only sufferer in 
this great work of winning a church out 
of this apostate world to holiness and 
to heaven. Though his was the only 
true sacrificial work, still he left behind 
afflictions which his people were to fill up 
in their flesh — in some outward service of 
doing or enduring — in carrying out the 
purpose for which he died. They were 
to watch and work as their Master 
watched and worked, and sometimes also, 
like their Master, to suffer and die for the 
cause. 

From men of that spirit, how noble 
would have been the utterance of our 
working song — 



144 UPWARD. 

" Must Jesus bear the cross alone, 
And all the world go free? 
No, there's a cross for every one, 
And there's a cross for me !" 

From the stand-point of Calvary the 
writers of the New Testament were ac- 
customed to look neither at earth with 
its toils, nor at heaven with its rest, by 
itself alone. " To this end Christ both 
died and rose and revived, that he might 
be Lord both of the dead and living.'' 
" We labor, that whether present or ab- 
sent, we may be accepted of him." " For 
me to live is Christ, and to die is gain." 
Over and over again has the spirit of in- 
spiration brought the warfare and the 
victory into the same field of vision, and 
in such terms as make the power of the 
cross no less direct toward a faithful 
Christian life than toward a triumphant 
death. So goes on our hymn — 

"The consecrated cross I'll bear, 
Till death shall set me free; 
And then go home my crown to wear, 
For there's a crown for me." 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 145 

The shortness of the time comes in as 
a warning incentive, calling for earnest- 
ness of service. True it is not the holiest, 
and should not be the strongest spur to 
Christian activity. It is of use only in 
this inconstant world. In heaven, with- 
out any warnings for haste from dying 
chambers and funeral bells, they work 
faster and better than any of us here. 
The most prompt service is rendered 
where the incentive is the unmixed one 
of love. So, in his better moments, it is 
felt by the Christian in this world. It is 
not rare that the true lover of his unseen 
Lord enters into the feelings of the three 
disciples,. who, on the Mount of Transfigu- 
ration, ravished by the sight of the ex- 
cellent glory, spoke first of all their con- 
secration to service. It is good to be 
here, if we may build tabernacles for thee 
and thine. It is good to dwell on the 
mount of love, if we may do the works 
of love. 

13 K 



146 UPWARD. 

Still, in commending to us inducements 
to service, God treats us as yet living in 
a world where the best frames of spirit 
are inconstant. It is earth yet, and so 
Death must stand forth our ordained 
preacher, filling all the ways of life with 
his sepulchral oratory, moving us to do 
with our might what our hands find to 
do, for the solemn reason that there is no 
work in the grave whither we go. 

The best laborers in the Church might 
live too long. It is a painful thought, 
but with the records of human incon- 
stancy before us, it cannot be suppressed. 
Short as the day of the hireling now is, 
we sometimes grow impatient of toil. 
The work for to-day is often laid aside 
until to-morrow; that which belongs to 
the present year is postponed until the 
next. This is done by those who know 
it may be at the sacrifice of the last op- 
portunity for performance. What then 
might become of the industry of us all, 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 147 

if, in our present habitudes of body and 
mind, we were immortal? Is it not well 
for the kingdom of Christ in the world, 
that the great programme of labor 
through which its eventual triumph is to 
come passes from hand to hand? Is it 
not well that death is made one of the in- 
strumentalities through which efficient 
service is perpetually secured? Each 
laborer is thus brought to feel that he has 
but a short time with his task before it 
is handed over to some successor. If he 
would do anything he must do it fast. 
If he would not carry the one thriftless 
talent in the napkin to the final judg- 
ment he must make haste to use it. 

Any worldly enterprise which requires 
ages for its perfection feels the influence 
of death as an element of efficiency. 
The administration of an empire would 
become indolent if any one sovereign, 
even a Charlemagne, were immortal on 
his throne. In this world, it is the 



148 UPWARD. 

recognized law for all long successful en- 
terprise, that while time impairs efficiency, 
freshness promotes the vigor of service. 

The enterprise which Christ has left to 
his Church is not exempt from this rule. 
It is a work for ages. Long centuries of 
toil and suffering must be worked and 
suffered through, before reaching the 
final achievements of the cross in this 
world of sin. The vigor of service must 
not relax to the end. And so death 
passes the work along from hand to hand. 
It takes it from those whose ambition for 
toil is bowing under the burden, and 
hands it down to others, who, in fresh 
energy, are panting to play their glorious 
part. 

This arrangement, so good for the 
Church, has no ungenerous aspect toward 
the individual. The sentinel on his weary 
watch listens without dread for the bell 
which strikes the hour for another to 
take his round. So with the servant of 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 149 

Jesus, faithful at his post: why should 
he recoil from the approaching hour for 
exchanging the watch? Why should he 
linger at nightfall, reluctant to leave his 
work, when his good Redeemer would 
have him look through the darkness to 
the rewarding morning? All will go 
well, whether with himself or with the 
work he leaves. Men die, but the cause 
of redemption lives, and shall never want 
men to bear it on while one sinner re- 
mains under the day of grace. 

This view of the Divine wisdom in the 
uses of death, speaks, oh how solemnly ! 
to the writer and reader, to the whole 
company of the Church, to all who have 
any thought of reaching heaven. Its 
voice is, Work ! Work for Christ and 
for human salvation ! Work while it is 
day ! and remember that the day is not 
done until the sun is fully set. What 
can be better for the Christian veteran 
than to march in his panoply up to the 

13* 



150 UPWAKD. 

very gate of heaven ! What better than 
to have it said of him when he is gone — 

" Thou hast fallen in thine armor, 
Thou servant of the Lord ; 
Thy last breath crying, Onward ! 
Thy hand upon thy sword!" 

There follows naturally the thought 
of this further incitement to a faithful 
service of doing — its intimate connec- 
tion with the glory to come. No careful 
reader of the Holy Scriptures can have 
failed to notice how often they connect 
the labor with the reward — the cross with 
the crown. So our Lord strengthened 
in his personal followers zeal for action 
and faith for endurance: "Ye are they 
which have continued with me in my 
temptations ; and I appoint unto you a 
kingdom, as my Father hath appointed 
unto me." The voice from heaven to the 
Revelator in Patmos, bade him write 
concerning the blessed dead who die in 
the Lord, that they "rest from their 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 151 

labors, and their works do follow them." 
Without here pausing over the theological 
relation of the works to the reward, no 
one can carefully read either of the pas- 
sages just quoted without receiving from 
them this plain impression — there must be 
first toil for Christ on earth and then re- 
pose with him in heaven. The hand that 
has clung longest to the cross lays the 
firmest grasp upon the crown. It is as true 
in holy activities and rest as in our phys- 
ical aptitudes, that "the sleep of the 
laboring man is sweet." It was written 
of those who amid great tribulation had 
washed their robes in the blood of the 
Lamb. " Therefore, [because of what 
they did and experienced on earth,] are 
they before the throne of God, and serve 
him day and night in his temple. . . . 
The Lamb which is in the midst of the 
throne shall feed them, and shall lead them 
unto living fountains of waters, and Grod 
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 



152 UPWARD. 

See how the faithful and honored ser- 
vants of Christ have, from the threshold 
of glory, looked back upon their life-work 
for Jesus ! Paul, when an old and war- 
scarred soldier of Jesus, with his weary 
feet almost on the immortal shore, wrote 
in happy review of all he had done and 
suffered for his Lord, and of the inti- 
mate connection between his toils and en- 
durances and the joyous triumph which 
awaited him. " I am now ready to be 
offered, and the time of my departure is 
at hand. I have fought a good fight, I 
have finished my course, I have kept the 
faith : henceforth there is laid up for me 
a crown of righteousness which the Lord, 
the righteous Judge, shall give me at that 
day." 

Thus stretching his view over earth 
behind and heaven before — a view which 
embraced the whole bearing of the endur- 
ance upon the triumph — he sent back 
his voice to the young laborer, to whom 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 153 

he thus wrote to work for Christ : " Thou 
therefore endure hardness as a good sol- 
dier of Christ." 

The writer of these pages many years 
ago visited an aged friend — one who had 
done long service for Christ and who was 
then suffering and sinking under mortal 
disease and expecting soon to die. He 
had reached the point where he felt that 
his earthly service was closing, and his 
longing gaze was turned intensely toward 
heaven. From those beamings of glory 
he looked back once more to earth and to 
the Christian's work on the earth. " Oh," 
said he, " I have loved it, but I never 
before had such views of the inexpress- 
ible joy of laboring for God. I want to 
say to you ; I want to say to all the min- 
isters ; yes, I want to lift up a loud voice 
and say to all the brethren, ministers or 
laymen, Work for God ! work, work ! I 
have no words to tell you how blessed it 
is. Tell them that they will never know 



154 UPWARD. 

until they view it from where I now stand, 
but they will know it all then." 

The order of a gallant naval captain, 
" Don't give up the ship !" w r as immor- 
talized because it was spoken in death. 
So let the shout of the dying Christian 
veteran be passed along the hosts, the 
rallying cry for fresh encounters with sin 
and Satan in this world of ours, Work 
while it is day ! work for Grod ! 




XII. 

THE SERVICE OF DOING. 

SECOND — ENCOURAGEMENTS. 

* 

fHE most real trials of Christian effort 
do not consist in their tax upon our 
j means and strength. Discouragement 
is the chief foe to heartsome labor. The 
holding of that scowling fiend at bay is 
always an indispensable condition of hap- 
piness, and generally of usefulness, in our 
work. 

A sincere but too easily depressed 
Christian writes to his friend: "God 
knows that I have no greater desire than 
to see that I am really doing good in his 
cause. I would labor for it; for this I 
would gladly spend and be spent; I do 
not know that it would be too much to 

155 



156 UPWARD. 

say that I would willingly die for it. 
But my courage is almost broken and I 
am sorely tempted to give up. It is not 
that I crave rest. I am not tired of 
work. I took the toil into account when 
I gave myself to Christ. I was warned 
to expect it, and I did so. I not only ex- 
pected it, but I sought it. I have no dif- 
ficulty with what some would call the 
drudgery of the service. In truth that is 
rather exhilarating than disheartening. 
I have noticed the flush of exultation with 
which a boy brings his first harvest-sheaves 
to the pile which his father is gathering. 
He pants under his work, but he is full 
of joy because it is his own contribution 
of effort in support of his father's interest. 
I can comprehend his pleasure, and, if 
other things were right, I would enjoy a 
similar feeling in all my labors to gather 
fruit unto life eternal. The exacting of 
mere means and energies in this work 
offers the least of all temptations to the 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 157 

repining propensity. It is only the trial 
which self-denial and fatigue give to pa- 
tience; and that is with me the mildest 
form of discipline for this virtue. 

" 'Tired of work?' No indeed! But 
these dark skies — what do they mean? 
Will the sun never break through the 
clouds in the moral heavens? In the 
harness of mere toil I could work on to 
old age, happy to live and to die, but I 
sink under discouragement. When I see 
that my hands are stretched forth all the 
day long to a disobedient and gainsaying 
people; when I see that, after all is done, 
the moral changes are apparently against 
the cause of Christ and iniquity is ac- 
tually gaining ground, and that even the 
tender ear of childhood is turned away 
from the story of the love of Jesus, thus 
making the prospect for the future worse 
and worse, I find it almost impossible to 
listen to the voice which says, ' Persevere 
and hope on!' I know how wicked des- 

14 



158 UPWARD. 

pondency is, but when it comes upon me 
as an armed man, I have no strength left 
for the battle. I sink in the deep waters : 
God help me!" 

The above complaint is an example of 
many which go up from the field of 
Christian toil. Men of really devoted 
spirit are- not always courageous when 
they see the world growing harder in the 
very face of their labors, and especially 
when long continued efforts still bring few 
satisfactory results. They would keep 
better watch against despondency if they 
would more carefully observe its tendency 
toward acrimony of spirit. They are 
prone to indulge angry feelings toward 
men for whose good they labor, but who 
ungratefully resist every benign influence 
which is employed in their behalf. They 
are apt to lose patience with others who 
profess to be devoted to the same noble 
interest which fills their own hearts, but 
who are never found at the post of duty 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 159 

when their personal services are most 
needed. 

But worse than this, when the Chris- 
tian laborer feels his hope of success 
giving away, he sometimes carries his 
displeasure against God himself. Before 
he is aware he finds himself dissatisfied 
— shall it be said angry? — because God 
suffers men to remain unmoved and does 
not openly honor his efforts to promote 
the glory of Christ in the world. Like 
the prophet under the juniper tree, first 
discouraged and then vexed, he is ready 
to cry, "It is enough; now, Lord, take 
away my life." Like the same prophet 
in the cave, his heart adopts the petulant 
expostulation that, while he has been 
very jealous for the Lord God of hosts, 
he has been ungenerously deserted of 
heaven and left alone in his work. 

This is the natural culminating point of 
all discouragement under Christian labor. 
And when this point is reached we can 



160 UPWARD. 

see what a vile as well as gloomy thing 
such discouragement is. It is a quarrel 
with heaven, and it must be given up. 
It may cost long and hard struggle with 
the morbid habit of spirit, but it must 
be given up. Otherwise there is no cheer 
for toil, perhaps no good in it, certainly 
no heavenly peace for the life, and who 
can be sure of any precious hope in 
death? 

Suppose then we look over this broad 
field of the service of doing, first inquir- 
ing what belongs to us and what to Grod. 
Let us see whether what we so often call 
the unfruitfulness of Christian labor may 
not be a delusion of the outward sense, 
and whether the despondency arising 
from it is not often the self-will of a 
mind which assumes to itself the prerog- 
ative of shaping means and ends. It is 
certain that no cloud of real gloom can 
abide over any true service for Christ, 
and there are standpoints of vision from 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 161 

which we can see the mists passing off 
and all such service glowing under the 
promise, "Your labor is not in vain in 
the Lord." 

Here is one thought to lift the cloud : 
Grod has nowhere promised to reward us 
for the success of our efforts. He has 
never spoken of their results as the thing 
for which he bestows upon us his ap- 
proval. The spirit and character of 
these efforts is one thing: the effect 
which they accomplish another. They 
are entirely distinct, and each is to be 
viewed by itself. One involves our per- 
sonal responsibility, while God alone 
takes care of the other. The assurance 
that we shall be blessed in all our toils 
and sufferings for the cause of Christ has 
only these uniform and simple conditions, 
that we are to do our best, and do it under 
the incitement of love. This closes the 
whole account of what concerns us. 

Then w r hen our Lord looks smilingly 

14 * L 



162 UPWARD. 

upon us, as he looked upon the loving 
disciple of whom he said, " She hath done 
what she could," we may be happy under 
those smiles without waiting to learn 
w r hat use he will make of the things done. 
Whether the crop freshens in the showers 
of spring and ripens under the harvest 
sun, or whether it seems as if perished in 
the frosts of winter or drought of sum- 
mer, there remains a blessing for the 
faithful sower of the seed, w 7 hich, to his 
own soul at least, shall be a harvest re- 
ward : " Glod is not unrighteous to forget 
your w r ork and labor of love which ye have 
showed toward his name." However 
men may speak of toiling to no purpose, 
his word of encouragement is never with- 
drawn. The Christian, whose trusting- 
soul looks up to the crown of life as one 
certain prize for those who are simply 
faithful unto death, has no trembling 
for the issue. Though now worn and 
tempted to faint under watchings, appar- 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 163 

ently almost in vain, for some present 
tokens of usefulness, this refreshing 
thought makes him once more happy in 
his toil, — that if he is faithful for Christ's 
sake, a few hours more of work will 
bring the welcome change. A few hours 
more, and 

" There on a green and flowery mount 
Our weary souls shall sit, 
And with transporting joy recount 
The labors of our feet" 

He may well be " steadfast, unmovable, 
always abounding in the work of the 
Lord" whose strong faith is anchored to 
the assurance, " forasmuch as ye know 
that your labor is not in vain in the 
Lord." 

But it is not alone this anticipation of 
the heavenly reward which makes our 
present service cheerful and satisfying. 
Irrespective of present success, all that 
we do in faithful love brings present 
recompense to our hearts. Christian 



164 UPWARD. 

work has always its reflex bearings upon 
the worker, which become the heart's 

"Celestial fruit on earthly ground" — 

foretastes of the recompense to come. 
The " doer of the work" is " blessed in his 
dee&sT Good reason may exist why 
God's open approbation of our service 
should linger, but he hastens the visits 
of his love to our souls. Indeed, on a care- 
ful examination of his discipline of our 
hearts, we shall sometimes be surprised to 
find the best spiritual comforts arising 
from the very things which are darkest 
to our senses. 

Look for example at the power of what 
men call cross-providences and causes for 
despondency to excite the confiding Chris- 
tian's/^'^. This is a joyous grace — one 
of the celestial three which are stars of 
the first magnitude in the firmament of 
Christian peace. It is evidence of par- 
don ; it unites to Christ ; it is one me- 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 165 

dium through which we look up and see 
the Blessed One. Faith is eyes to the 
believer, " for we walk by faith, not by 
sight." 

But without some sensual darkness 
there can be no faith. The things of 
which it is the evidence are not seen. The 
good of which it is the substance is hoped 
for — meaning, of course, not now possessed. 
If we could now see everything take the 
form in which our infirm policy would 
have shaped it, what room would remain 
for the refreshing sentiment of trust 
which keeps us so near to Christ ? But 
as it is, God's ways are so inscrutably 
above human policies, and his paths in 
such a deep sea, that much of our joy in 
him grows out of that inwrought confi- 
dence which tells us that all done by our 
heavenly Father is well done. What- 
ever awakens faith becomes tributary to 
our delight. 

Then it is not strange if our covenant 



166 UPWAKD. 

Lord leads us along dark paths that he 
may teach our trembling hearts the bless- 
ing of trust. Perhaps for this very 
reason he purposely withholds from our 
sight the reward which, for the present, 
he wishes only the eye of faith to behold. 
What we call the discouragement of ex- 
pending our charities and efforts only to 
see things grow worse and worse, may 
then be a Divine culture of the grace 
which draws the believer near to God, to 
wait under the shadow of his throne for 
the chosen hour when we shall be allowed 
to see, as well as believe, that all went on 
well. In this spirit Cowper wrote of the 
" mysterious way" in which Grod moves, 
"his wonders to perform:" 

"Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, 
But trust him for his grace; 
Behind a frowning providence 
He hides a smiling face. 

"His purposes will ripen fast, 
Unfolding every hour; 
The bud may have a bitter taste, 
But sweet will be the flower. 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 167 

u Blind unbelief is sure to err, 
And scan his works in vain ; 
God is his own interpreter, 
And he will make it plain." 

Bat faith is not the only reflex comfort 
of toiling under outward gloom with a 
true and fond devotion to Christ. Ohedi- 
ence is a source of joy. There is an inex- 
pressible sweetness in the reflection that 
we are striving to do the will of God. 
This sentiment, when sincerely cherished, 
is nothing less than the spirit of Christ 
in the soul. We look up' to our Lord, 
and we hear him proclaim the moving 
cause of his own mission of toil and suf- 
fering in the world — u Lo! I come; in 
the volume of the book it is written of 
me, I delight to do thy will, my God!" 
Sustained by the happy consciousness 
that he was faithful to an appointed work, 
his courage did not give way in those 
dark hours when even his own received 
him not. He knew that his labors were 



168 UPWARD. 

accomplishing the Divine purpose, and he 
was satisfied. 

Like him we are sent into the world to 
do the will of our Father in heaven. It 
is a holy mission which we are to execute — 
not to acquire a personal reputation for 
effective talent, but for the glory of him 
who sent us. Whatever amount of suc- 
cess may now attend our labors, we shall 
soon "give account with joy," if, with the 
consciousness of honest purpose and after 
faithful endurance, we can say to God, as 
we ascend, "I have finished the work 
which thou gavest me to do." 



XIII. 

THE SERVICE OF DOING. 

THIRD — FRUIT. 

fENTION has been made of the bless- 
edness of Christian service, irrespec- 
tive of the question of outward suc- 
cess. Let it not however be inferred that 
we may be careless respecting the visible 
fruit of our labors or cherish anything 
less than a deep solicitude concerning the 
persons or things which are the objects 
of them. When allowed to reap with 
joy a quick harvest from what was sown 
in tears, we are indeed blest with the pe- 
culiar favor of our rewarding God. If 
we are permitted to behold the waste 
places of the earth robing themselves 
with the glory of Lebanon and the ex- 



15 



169 



170 UPWARD. 

cellency of Carmel and Sharon, under 
our cultivation, our hearts should con- 
tribute their own happy strains to the 
voice of joy and singing which rises from 
the reclaimed desert. 

On the other hand, the want of visible 
tokens of success should always awaken 
solemn inquiry why so little harvest 
grows under so much culture. Every 
class of laborers — ministers or laymen, 
those who speak, write, pray, w r ork or 
contribute of their worldly wealth — 
should each alike be faithful and resolute 
to reach the truth in such a scrutiny. It 
is always satisfying to reflect that we 
have done what we could for Christ. 
But this satisfaction would be a spurious 
peace if it produced indifference respect- 
ing the effect of our exertions. 

The question, whether the impoverished 
state of the ground which we are striving 
to improve, may not be traced to our 
thriftless husbandry, is natural and per- 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 171 

tinent. Others will make such an in- 
quiry respecting us, and we ought to 
make it for ourselves. Have our efforts 
been uniformly obedient to the motions 
of the Holy Spirit in our hearts ? Have 
we gone forth bearing precious seed, be- 
cause we desired to reap a harvest, not 
for ourselves, for a party or for any hu- 
man interest, but for God? While be- 
stowing our diligence, were our hearts 
before the throne of grace in earnest 
prayer that God would do his own work? 
Have our plans been wise and our means 
appropriate? Has our patience been 
constant and our spirit affectionate? In 
the amount as well as spirit of our in- 
dustry, have we been faithful, remember- 
ing the motive which so deeply affected 
our Master, "I must work the works of 
him that sent me while it is clay; the 
night cometh when no man can work?" 

Grave this on the memory as with the 
point of a diamond, that every Christian 



172 UPWARD. 

comfort requires some definite and intelli- 
gible evidence that we are proper subjects 
of it. Questions like the above must 
have a satisfactory answer in our con- 
sciousness before we can review what 
are called discouraging labors with per- 
fect calmness. But when, looking over 
all this ground, we can say to the honor 
of Divine grace, that our hearts are clear 
or our short-comings forgiven, then peace 
will fly to our bosoms, however success 
may linger. We have done our part, 
and like our Divine Pattern, we find our 
delight in performing the will of Grod. 

But there are yet richer w r ords of cheer 
for the fainting toiler in the Christian 
field. All along Grod does support him 
with other promises besides the assurance 
of being himself watered from the river 
of heavenly love. All along there shines 
before him the pledge of everlasting 
truth, that faithful Christian effort shall 
accomplish valuable results in other 



THE SEEVICE OF DOING. 173 

hearts and promote the interest of Christ 
in the world. He has the assurance of 
heaven that he is doing good. It is writ- 
ten : " He that reapeth receiveth wages, 
and gatliereth fruit unto life eternal, that 
both he that soweth, and he that reapeth, 
may rejoice together." " They that sow 
in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth 
forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, 
shall doubtless come again rejoicing, 
bringing his sheaves with him." Words 
of loving kindness and inspiring hope! 
And they are examples of a long array 
of like precious promises, in the light of 
which the shamefulness of such terms as 
gloomy prospects and unrequited toil is 
glaringly exposed. The care of heaven 
will nourish every seed, and bring forth 
in their best seasons, the blade, the ear, 
and after that, the full corn. There is 

NO DARK PROSPECT IN THE DISCHARGE OF 
DUTY. 

Our notions of success are apt to be 



174 UPWARD. 

earthly. We forget that there are other 
worlds which form the theatre where 
great events are accomplished. We 
measure time by days and years, and 
from thence we obtain our ideas of the 
fast and the slow. When the wheels of 
providence seem, in our impatient view, 
to turn lazily, we forget that they are 
moving in an eternal journey. They 
will take their time, it is true, but they 
will never stop. The comprehensiveness 
of the government of God — what a re- 
viving theme to the faithful workers for 
Christ ! The path in which The Eter- 
nal walks is the way everlasting. It 
can never be sought out by malign coun- 
ter-agencies. " The vulture's eye hath not 
seen it; the lion's whelps have not trod- 
den it, nor the fierce lion passed by it." 
The same Omniscience which marks out 
the means keeps a sleepless watch for 
the end. Events which belong to each 
other may long wander apart, each ful- 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 175 

filling for a season some peculiar mission 
of its own ; but their tracks will converge 
at the proper time. Causes and effects 
will meet whenever the great universal 
arrangement will be promoted by making 
their relation apparent. Then, but not 
before, we shall know what good we have 
done. The time may come soon or it 
may delay for ages, but it will come. 

As God has just the hour and place for- 
our efforts, so he has just the result which 
he expects and just the period which is 
propitious for its accomplishment. It may 
be our mission to ameliorate some special 
cases of human suffering, to exert a holy 
influence in the circle of home, to train 
some instruments of future usefulness, to 
promote some specific reformation, to lead 
sinners around us to Christ, to promote 
the general prosperity of the Redeemer's 
kingdom, to lay foundations upon which 
beneficent structures may rise in the 
future, or to exemplify the general princi- 



176 UPWARD. 

pies of the Divine glory. On the uniform 
condition of faithfulness, success is as- 
sured to our peculiar mission, whatever 
it is. But the nature of that success, 
with the times and seasons, is in the 
hands of Him for whom we work. Our 
impatience cannot affect his far-reaching 
appointments. But our faith in his par- 
ticular and universal providence arms us 
against despondency, and our long tasks 
are lightened by the thought that the 
achievement is sure. 

We do not stop to perplex ourselves 
with the questions, when? and where? 
We hear from the voice of God all which 
properly concerns us: "In the morning 
sow thy seed, and in the evening with- 
hold not thy hand." We then comfort 
our souls with the reflection that "our 
judgment is with the Lord and our work 
with our God." We are satisfied with 
the Divine approval. We feel a sweet 
consciousness that we are spending and 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 177 

being spent for Christ. Our consciences 
are at peace and our souls are ennobled 
by the thought that we are God's own 
chosen instruments of good — polished 
shafts in his quiver. 

One* who had labored faithfully, and 
with many prayers, as a lay exhorter, be- 
held year after year pass with scarcely a 
cheering ray of present success. His 
field was one of the most forbidding 
which exist in Christian lands. He was 
derided in the streets, religion was 
scorned and the name of Christ was 
hourly blasphemed. Friends urged him 
to give over. They told him he had 
made a fair trial of the power of the 

* For this narrative, the writer is indebted to the remote 
memory of the reading of his boyhood, the period when the 
impression of narratives is enduring. He believes it was 
read from a London paper, but at this period he can give no 
voucher for either its source or its truthfulness. In the 
kingdom of grace it has too many parallels to be regarded as 
incredible, and therefore serves the purpose of an illustra- 
tion, whether the reader accept it as historical or as a para- 
ble. 

M 



178 UPWARD. 

gospel among those reprobates, and that 
was enough. 

But in his earnest communion with 
Heaven he obtained some peculiar prom- 
ise — an inwrought token from the Angel 
of the covenant. For who will say that 
God makes no special communications of 
this kind to those who are placed by 
himself where their support is peculiarly 
needed? To every proposal that he 
should abandon his field he replied that 
he was more and more convinced that he 
was doing work for God and he must not 
leave it. 

Death arrested these labors. He had 
seen little outward appearance of good, 
but he did not mourn over an hour of 
his self-denying service as wasted labor. 
The special token cheered his last heavenly 
communion this side of the veil, and he 
departed under the feeling, not only that 
he had performed service which, for 
Christ's sake, would be accepted, but that 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 179 

he had clone a great work. Was this 
peculiar assurance to which his faith an- 
chored itself visionary? Was it all a 
dream that "a cake of barley tumbled 
into the host of Midian," smiting the 
tents of the uncircumcised? or was it in- 
deed "the sword of Gideon, the son of 
Joash, a man of Israel," into whose hand 
God had delivered those armies? 

A young man w r ho applied for ecclesi- 
astical authoritv to o-o forth as an or- 
dained minister of Christ was required 
to relate his religious experience. In so 
doing, he traced his conversion to the 
instrumentality of that lay exhorter. 
During the life of that faithful servant 
of Christ this youth had been one of the 
scorners who afflicted his soul. His 
death awakened him to solemn reflec- 
tions. He reviewed his self-denying con- 
secration, his tears of compassion and 
labors of love; he thought of his prayers 
that God would forgive those who de- 



180 UPWARD. 

spitefully used him — thought of all, until 
the remembrance of that example of 
Christian tenderness was too much to 
bear. He was brought to the cross, 
qualified for the ministry and sent forth 
to preach the everlasting gospel. 

Not a moment was wasted in seeking 
an eligible post of labor. There was but 
one place for Mm. Who so well as him- 
self could tell his late companions in 
wickedness how they had together sinned 
against the love of God, in sinning 
against the love of the self-denying ser- 
vant of Grod? They listened with gradu- 
ally improving decency, and at length 
with earnest attention. Some hearts bled 
under the same self-reproach which had 
broken his own. There were soon enough 
for a concert of prayer. Then, though 
the earlier day of grace had been de- 
spised, they asked of the Lord rain in the 
time of the latter rain, and he made 
bright clouds and gave them showers of 



THE SERVICE OF DOING. 181 

rain. The dens of blasphemy were ex- 
changed for places of prayer, and men 
whose garments had been clotted with 
each other's blood, in street brawls, sat 
together as exemplary rulers in the con- 
gregation of the saints. 

After a few years of such service that 
young pastor followed the lay exhorter to 
glory. The reaper had received the 
wages, and gathered the eternal fruit. 
But oh the joy unspeakable and full of 
glory with which he that sowed and he 
that reaped rejoiced together! 

16 




XIV. 

THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 
FIRST — THE CONSECRATION AND THE COVENANT. 

d CHRISTIAN minister, in the sev- 
l\ enty -seventh year of his age, was 
^ laid for several months upon a bed 
of suffering, and, as it proved in -the end, 
the bed of death. He was a faithful and 
holy man, remarkable for an industrious 
discharge of the numerous duties which 
his somewhat peculiar position placed 
in his way. He had been wonderfully 
favored in relation to bodily health. One 
man out of a thousand could not be found 
who had enjoyed a freedom so uniform 
from sickness or other physical infirmities. 
He had often said that he hardly knew 
what pain was. It came however in 

182 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 183 

those last .months of his life, and wrought 
upon him with a terrible severity, as if 
it was resolved to balance his account 
with human suffering before he should 
be relieved for ever. 

During that long season of distress 
his soul lay submissively in the Ever- 
lasting Arms. He spoke of God's deal- 
ings with quiet satisfaction, and of the 
Divine government with exceeding joy. 
" When," said he, " I consecrated myself 
to God. I bound myself to service. Since 
then I have attached great importance to 
doing the will of God. Times occurred 
when it seemed hard, but it was part of 
the service, and I said to myself, Do it. 
But somehow it never until now struck 
my mind with much force that there is 
just as much service in suffering as in 
doing the will of God. I find it harder 
to suffer than to clo his will; but I am 
just as truly in his work, and I believe 
that, for Christ's sake, he will accept the 



184 UPWAED. 

service of suffering as well as that of 
doing." 

What a beautiful frame of mind for 
the Christian, pressed clown with anguish 
of body and expecting no relief except 
in death! What an all -supporting sen- 
timent in the hour of trial! What sub- 
limer thought could be summoned to aid 
the soul struggling, to bear itself above 
the angry waters ! 

The sufferer turned his thoughts back 
to the self-consecrating engagements of 
long past years. He remembered that 
many weary hours of toil had been 
lightened by the reflection that they 
were a part of the contract between his 
soul and Christ. He had experienced 
great joy in the belief that they would be 
accepted as acts of faithfulness to his en- 
gagement. It was not because he ex- 
pected God to look upon him as righteous 
for these things, or because he trusted to 
anything short of the mediation of the 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 185 

Redeemer for mercy and acceptance. 
Still, like Paul, he had labored that he 
might be accepted of him, and the hope 
of that acceptance had inspired his am- 
bition to spend and be spent. Now he is 
brought into another department of duty 
still more trying, and, lo! these same 
covenant engagements come to his aid, 
armed with new strength to cheer and 
support. What a w T eapon of defence for 
holding distress at bay! He had bound 
himself to service, and it was his delight 
to fill out the engagement. He had served 
in the field, and now he was serving in 
the fire. It was service still, and the ser- 
vice of suffering would be no less accept- 
able than that of doing. 

How strangely some of the most com- 
mon truths float through the mind — 
known indeed to be real, but perceived 
only as shadows — until some event brings 
them into action as articles of experience! 
Then how we are astonished that things 

16 * 



186 UPWAKD. 

so old are yet so new — that though we 
seemed to have known them so long we 
did not know them at all! The new 
thought of the aged minister did not prob- 
ably embrace any addition to his theo- 
retical knowledge of the Christian life. 
But there was a point which had lain in 
the mind as a dim, shadowy, abstract 
thing, until the providence of God called 
him to take it up as emphatically the 
point for the present emergency. Then 
it burst upon his faith with all the fresh- 
ness of a new revelation from heaven. 
Hitherto he had remembered how it was 
meat and drink to the Saviour to do the 
will of him that sent him ; and he had 
made it the highest aspiration of his 
own renewed soul to do the will of 
God. But he had laid an emphasis on 
the word do which prevented him from 
seeing : the comprehensiveness of the duty 
required. The true meaning of the word, 
as he afterward found, was to yield obe- 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 187 

dience ; and as Christ's obedience was 
rendered alike in preaching, healing and 
in suffering on the cross, so he could ful- 
fill his covenant of service and perform 
the Divine will as really in the endu- 
rance of his bodily pains as in active 
labors for God. He could not be happy 
without serving God. He discovered 
that in suffering he could serve him as 
devotedly as ever, and he was happy. 

This view of the Christian's endurance 
of suffering of whatever kind as a cov- 
enant service becomes more vivid as we 
reflect upon the condition on which he 
first gave himself to Christ. It was an 
act of consecration. The surrender was 
without limit. It embraced himself, body 
and soul, but it embraced more. All the 
circumstances which are to affect his 
condition, all future personal allotments, 
with whatever joys or sorrows await 
them, were included in the cheerful dedi- 
cation of all to Christ. 



188 UPWAED. 

Still more to the purpose is this con- 
sideration : not only did he, on his part, 
commit all his circumstances, with him- 
self, to Christ, but in the covenant under 
which he was redeemed, those circum- 
stances were placed by the Father under 
the special control of the Mediator of the 
covenant. 

It is not enough to say of Christ 
that he is the mediatorial King of the 
Church which he bought with his own 
blood. In this office, he must needs 
have power so to adjust the events of the 
world that they shall promote the peace 
of his friends and lead to their sanctifi- 
cation, and to the final triumph which is 
mutually theirs and his own. This is one 
glory of the arrangement by which God 
" hath put all things under his feet, and 
given him to be head over all things to 
the Church^ — for the Church's sake. 

In this connection it should also be re- 
membered that it is a prominent object 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 189 

of our Redeemer's mediatorial adminis- 
tration to afford his friends every desira- 
ble security from present evils, and to 
confer the greatest happiness which they 
are prepared to enjo}^. Immeasurably 
blessed himself in the work which he 
finished upon the cross, he delights to 
impart the full benefit of that work to 
those for whose sake he sanctified him- 
self. Under the Covenant, he rules in 
providence as w r ell as grace. Thus he is 
enabled to compel all things to " work to- 
g ether for good to them that love God." 
Here there is protection from present 
evils and support under present sorrows, 
as well as a future heme where tears 
are wiped from all faces. Stretching its 
shadow over the whole path of Christian 
experience, from the hour of our espousals 
to the unending future, how truly this 
covenant makes of Christ 

" Our refuge from the stormy blast, 
And our eternal home !" 



190 UPWARD. 

Once more, and with peculiar attention, 
be it remembered that if our peace under 
this covenant depends upon Christ's 
ability to overrule every event for our 
benefit, we could not withhold any one of 
the all things of ours from his control 
without destroying his power to make 
them work together for our good. If we 
would have the peace which the covenant 
promise secures to the submissive heart, 
we must cheerfully commit our circum- 
stances to covenant control. The afflicted 
Christian, tempted out of the anguish of 
hisspirit to become rebellious, and to say 
in relation to anything, " I cannot submit 
myself to the disposal of Grod, but I 
must have my own w r ay," would rob 
Christ of the power of securing his hap- 
piness from every providential allotment. 

But in the sweet consciousness that we 
are yielding all to the care of him who 
governs the world for the happiness of 
his people, we are prepared to rejoice in 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 191 

all our tribulations. Perfect consecration 
teaches the consoling power of the truth 
that " all things are for your sakes." 
Then our souls sit in the sanctuary of 
The Comforter, and our sorrows are 
turned into a joy which no man taketh 
from us. 

Such views of the dominion of our me- 
diatorial King clear the darkened skies. 
It is true afflictions are afflictions still, 
but they are no longer the food for gloomy 
thoughts. They afford some of the best 
illustrations of the tenderness of God's 
heart and the sustaining power of his 
grace. There are indeed many mysteri- 
ous dispensations which are never ex- 
plained in this world. But they are jus- 
tified in the eye of that faith which sup- 
ports the Christian, when all other ground 
sinks beneath his feet. There is always 
a light in which they can be viewed, not 
merely without gloom, but with real sat- 
isfaction. There is always some explicit 



192 UPWAKD. 

reason for rejoicing that God has not ar- 
ranged matters as we should probably 
have ordered them, but has, in covenant 
goodness, ordained for us those light af- 
flictions of a moment which work an ex- 
ceeding and eternal weight of glory. 




XV. 

THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 
SECOND — THE SUBMISSION OF FAITH. 

N this world the outward condition 
is not the test of character. God has 
not marked the distinction between 
his friends and his enemies by a palpa- 
ble contrast in their earthly comforts. 
The seventy-third Psalm records how one 
good but distressed man almost lost his 
faith, when he saw the righteous suffer 
while the wicked seemed only to prosper, 
and how nobly he recovered himself. 

Affliction is the common lot. It is a 
war in which, like that with death, there 
is no discharge. The good and the bad 
are alike subject to the vicissitudes of 
wealth and poverty, honor and detrac- 

17 N 193 



194 UPWARD. 

tion, case and pain, life and death. The 
best friends of God may sit at scant 
tables, with no provision for another re- 
past except the unfailing promise that 
they shall be fed. They may be herded 
in uncomfortable abodes. They may see 
their children reach and pass the years 
when they need opportunities for im- 
provement, from which poverty debars 
them. They may be mortified by the in- 
constancy of friendships professed in bet- 
ter days, and may receive inhumanity 
and wrong from men who do not fear to 
oppress them because they are too weak 
to resist. 

In the abode of prayer, where every 
chamber is hallowed bv delightful com- 
m union with heaven, a diseased sufferer 
pines away the long years. For her the 
morning sun rises and the evening shad- 
ows gather almost in vain. Freshening 
springs and golden autumns have no joy, 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 195 

because they bring no change to the weary 
monotony of pain. 

In another domestic group, whose 
course has been marked with peculiar 
devotion to Christ, death has appeared, 
and, so far as regards this world, the 
purest light of earthly bliss is quenched 
for ever. True, in all sanctified sorrow, 
the wounds of earthly bereavement are 
healed by the Great Physician, but the 
mourner often remains scarred for life. 
Who has not known what it is to behold 
some of the precious affections of life 
hidden in sepulchral darkness? Past 
whose lips has the cup gone untasted? 

" There is no flock, however well attended, 
But one dead lamb is there ; 
There is no household, howsoe'er defended, 
But has one vacant chair." 

There is one theological truth which 
comes kindly to the aid of the sufferer 
who stands appalled before such pictures 
of human experience. It is not a deep 



196 UPWARD. 

thesis for the Reviews, but a peace-work- 
ing doctrine for the plain Christian who, 
in his hour of anguish, is tempted to cry. 
What is my unpardonable sin that I am 
thus singled out for the judgment of God? 
The point is that of the distinction be- 
tween sorrows that are simply providential 
occurrences in God's government, and those 
which are retributive. This distinction 
separates the natural evils to which sin 
exposes the human race at large, from 
those peculiar displays of the Divine 
wrath which are the proper penalty of sin, 
and which are measured out with strict 
regard to personal character. The truth 
is clear to calm thought, but in the hour 
of inward tumult it is sometimes forgot- 
ten, and when forgotten the refuge of 
trust fails. 

It is not meant that sin does not bring 
our troubles upon us. On the contrary, 
let it never be overlooked that affliction 
is the fruit ;f sin — the consequence of 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 197 

living in a world of guilt, of which our 
own sin forms a part. Hence it is always 
a call to repentance. Forgetting this 
fact, we should fail to receive one of the 
solemn impressions of the atrociousness 
of rebellion against God. We do well to 
study the enormity of sin in every lesson 
by which God teaches the awful truth. 
But these terrestrial troubles are not 
Wis prescribed penalty of transgression as 
written down in the law. Though they 
are the fruit, they are not the punishment 
of crime. For the believer is already 
justified by the work of his Redeemer. 
Wo part of a legal judgment or sentence 
of condemning wrath can be executed on 
those who are in him. "There is there- 
fore now no condemnation to them which 
are in Christ Jesus." The justified per- 
son may partake largely of the trials of 
life as the general effect of sin, but of 
that which is appropriately the cup of 

penal w r rath he can drink no more for 

17 * 



198 UPWAKD. 

ever. From the lips of the believer the 
dying Saviour snatched this chalice, and 
pressed it to his own. Th^n, while we 
must feel that sin is the instrument of all 
our human woes, we may nevertheless 
welcome the thought to our hearts that 
God may sometimes grieve us most 
while he loves us with his warmest love. 
Beyond the hiding of his face for a mo- 
ment in a little wrath, we may look to 
the everlasting kindness with which the 
Lord our Redeemer will have mercy on 
us. 

But beyond their share of natural evils, 
as partners in the common humanity, the 
servants of God sometimes experience 
other tribulations, more severe to human 
view, which grow directly out of their 
faithfulness to Christ. This was the form 
of discipline to which our Lord summoned 
the sons of Zebedee, and some measure 
of it is meted out to all his friends : " Ye 
shall drink indeed of my cup, and be 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 199 

baptized with the baptism that I am bap- 
tized with." The cruel mockings and 
scourgings and terrible martyrdoms of 
the ancient worthies were not the ordi- 
nary sufferings of humanity, but the pe- 
culiar dispensation of Heaven toward its 
own inheritors. Such forms of discipline 
vary with the ever-varying state of hu- 
man affairs. But some peculiar trials for 
our Master's sake are provided for every 
age, and they must be accepted by all 
who will accept Christ himself. 

It must not, however, be inferred that 
the griefs of the friends of Christ are 
heavier than those which the w 7 icked en- 
dure. Sinners also have sorrows of their 
own, besides their participation of the 
calamities which are common to all. If 
Elijah, as a man of God, had in that 
character some special afflictions, what 
were they beside the peculiar troubles of 
Ahab as the enemy of heaven? The 
sorrows of Paul at the block, or Ignatius 



200 UPWARD. 

in the amphitheatre, were as a feather 
compared with the leaden woes concealed 
under the imperial robes of Nero or Tra- 
jan. The riot of the wicked passions is 
often the immediate cause of the most 
awful outward judgments which are felt 
this side of the infernal world. Remorse, 
the undying worm, gnaws the poor sin- 
ner's conscience, and his spirit is wearied 
out in the warfare with an angry Grod. 

But here is the chief point of contrast. 
While there are sorrows common to all, 
and also peculiar tribulations for each 
class of men, the one receives a peculiar 
support, while the other has no refuge 
from the storm. The sinner battles with 
his troubles helpless and alone, and must 
be crushed by them in the end. But in 
the furnace the spirit of the friend of 
Christ is sustained by the faith that, in 
his case, God is refining the gold — that he 
is not pouring out his fury upon an enemy, 
but he is chastening whom he loves. 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 201 

While the ploughers make long their fur- 
rows upon his back, a voice which was 
never whispered in the ear of an ungodly 
sufferer breathes like the melody of sera- 
phim in his soul : " Ye now therefore have 
sorrow, but I w r ill see you again, and your 
heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man 
taketh from you." " thou afflicted, 
tossed with tempest, and not comforted ! 
. . . the mountains shall depart and 
the hills be removed, but my kindness 
shall not depart from thee, neither shall 
the covenant of my peace be removed. 
. . . This is the heritage of the servants 
of the Lord." Appropriating to ourselves 
this comfort from the lips of our Lord, 
sorrow ceases to disturb our peace. 

How incomparably superior to the 
highest human consolation is this heav- 
enly comfort! The resignation of the 
man of the world to his troubles is the 
submission of philosophy. It is self- 
taught and self-sustained. Its avail- 



202 UPWARD. 

ability depends wholly upon his mental 
fortitude. This submission claims to 
accomplish nothing more than a still 
patience under suffering. It never con- 
templates a happy reconciliation. The 
language of such a submission is, " Evils 
which cannot be avoided should be quietly 
borne. Outcries do not alleviate suffering. 
The noble nature of man ought to be 
strong to endure. None but cowards 
faint in the day of trouble. Since that 
which is laid upon us is an inevitable 
destiny, let us dignify ourselves by scorn- 
ing to repine/' In homelier phrase, such 
philosophical resignation is just this, all 
told: " What can't be cured must be en- 
dured.'' 

To one who is strengthening his nerves 
for this submission to fate we say", Take 
your philosophy : w r e choose to fall back 
on the sublime principle of faith in God. 
The language of implicit trust in the aid 
of heaven is the tongue in which we will 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 203 

speak our triumph over trial, and tell of 
the clear shining before which the showers 
flee. In our troubles we cannot stop at 
the cold maxim that we ^ must endure 
what cannot be helped, for under the 
teaching of Christ we have better learned 
why we are afflicted and what mercy 
dwells in every woe. Philosophy, draw- 
ing its sinews into tension and biting its 
lips, counts it a feat to bear trouble with- 
out a groan. But Faith, placing beneath 
us the arms of Everlasting Love, teaches 
us to cry out from the depths, " Thou 
hast been a strength to the poor, a strength 
to the needy in his distress, a refuge from 
the storm, a shadow from the heat, when 
the blast of the terrible ones is as a storm 
against the wall." 

Taught in the school of faith, we learn 
that no affliction befalls us without good 
reason on God's part and designs of bles- 
sedness toward ourselves. Every sorrow 
is an essential part of the course of disci- 



204 IJPWAKD. 

pline by which our present peace is en- 
larged and our future bliss perfected. 
The vivacity thus afforded to patience, 
faith and hope, together with the love of 
abiding the whole will of God, affords a 
rich experience of comfort in Christ — a 
calmer and sweeter repose than we could 
expect to obtain from a life of uniform 
outward prosperity. 



XVI. 

THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 

THIRD CHRIST SUSTAINING AND FOREARMING. 

c 

tN"E of the peculiar glories of religion 
is nobly illustrated in this : it is a 
j present help when its supports are 
most needed. Hours of distressing need 
are before us all, and who can tell but the 
days of darkness will be many? This 
side of the veil no view of Jesus is more 
precious than when he comes walking on 
the sea in the night of our anguish. 
How thrills the voice which is then heard 
above the roar of the tempest, "Be ye of 
good cheer; it is I; be not afraid!" How 
sweet the calm when, after having taken 
us by the band, before the waters over- 
whelmed us, he comes with us into the 

18 205 



206 TJPWAKD. 

ship! There is a good worldly maxim 
which says, " A friend in need is a friend 
indeed." But blessed above all human 
power to bless is union to Christ through 
all the present life — life as it is and will 
be in all human experience. On all that 
experience the fearful truth is deeply en- 
graved, that 

" Grief is rooted in our souls, 
And man grows up to mourn." 

It does not. follow that the Christian 
should become a sad contemplator of the 
world, who sees in it nothing but gloom, 
and whose heart is ever strung for mourn- 
ful melodies. The earth, even in its 
moral wreck, is still a bright and beauti- 
ful world, redolent of sweets for those 
who understand their enjoyment. Still, 
who can hope to escape a life of trouble? 
Who that lives only for the comforts of 
earth can look upon, his loveliest enjoy- 
ments without a dread feeling of insecu- 
rity for the next hour? Whose feet are 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 207 

not, even now, bleeding from the thorns 
which grow in his path? 

Looking soberly at what has befallen 
us, and what must befall us still, we feel 
this fullness of value in the support of 
Christ, that he is a near helper* in the 
hour of need — nearest when the necessity 
of his friend is deepest. There is one 
glaring view of the worthlessness of the 
world as a helper, which the wild eye of 
sin fails to catch, viz. : Worldly supports 
fail most cruelly when their need is most 
direfully felt. When the spirit of the 
sinner is most nearly famished, then the 
cup is most sure to be dashed from his 
lips. Let the unhappy votary of the 
world meet a change of fortune, let pros- 
perity forsake him and troubles throng 
him, and he will learn that human reli- 
ances are most inhumanly false at the 
exact time when their falseness is most 
keenly felt. The discarded favorite of 
Henry VIII. experienced only what 



208 UPWARD. 

thousands before him had felt, and thous- 
ands to come will feel, w r hen he exclaimed 
(or rather is made to say) , 

" Oh, Cromwell ! Cromwell ! 
Had I but served my God with half the zeal 
I served my king, he would not, in my age, 
Have left me naked to my enemies." 

But the hour of extremity is our 
Saviour's chosen time for bringing forth 
his best comforts. The richest offices of 
his grace are reserved for exigencies when, 
without its aid, the spirit would be crushed. 
When every other stream of comfort is 
dry, the river from this fountain over- 
flows its banks. The Comforter comes 
to those whom the world has cast out and 
trodden down, with loaded hands and 
words of cheer. To the mourner who 
dares not look around, for all is drear, he 
says, "Look up!" and lo! the transport 
of the celestial vision makes a morning 
of joy after a night of weeping. 

Affliction becomes a means of sanctified 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 209 

happiness when it is attended by an ex- 
quisite perception of the sympathy of 
Christ. "In all our afflictions he was af- 
flicted." The most delightful experiences 
of grace are those which afford the live- 
liest apprehension of nearness to the 
Saviour. Communion with our unseen 
Lord is felt in almost sensual reality 
when he speaks to our stricken hearts of 
his own fellow-feeling in our grief. We 
are sometimes almost in wonder whether 
it is not a real vision to the eye of sense:. 
we involuntarily look around, as if ex- 
pecting to behold the actual "form of the 
fourth, like the Son of God," walking by 
our side in .the furnace of fire, when the 
voice is so near and comes in such a still- 
ing whisper: "When thou passest through 
the waters, I will be with thee, and through 
the rivers, they shall not overflow thee; 
when thou walkest through the fire, thou 
shalt not be burned, neither shall the 
flame kindle upon thee." 

18 * 



210 UPWARD. 

During the persecution of Christians 
under the Emperor Julian, one Theodorus 
was laid upon the rack. His executioners 
loosened the instrument before the fatal 
extreme, and gave him a brief respite, in 
hope that the dread of further torture 
would move him to renounce Christ. 
But he exhibited a patience so surprising 
that he was asked how it was possible for 
him to endure so much with so little de- 
monstration of anguish. " At first," said 
he, "I felt pain, but afterward there ap- 
peared to stand by me a young man, who 
wiped the sweat from my face and fre- 
quently refreshed me with cold water, 
which so delighted me that I almost re- 
gretted being taken from the rack." 
Shall we call this vision the delusion of a 
fancy bewildered by the condition of the 
body? Not if we believe the spirit and 
power of the promise, "Lo! I am with 
you." 

The bare thought of the presence of 



the service of suffering. 211 

Christ with us in our sorrows falls far 
short of what is implied in his fellow- 
feeling. We have no sufficient view of 
his supporting love until we think of 
him as taking part in our sufferings. He 
who draws near to sorrowing humanity 
with words of kindness and hope was 
himself the " man of sorrows." Cast off 
by those for whose good he came to labor 
and die; poorer in worldly wealth than 
the foxes and birds ; at one time shunning 
a murderous mob ; at another weeping 
tears of affliction at the grave of a dear 
friend, and again shrinking with human 
dread from the prospect of coming woes, — 
his catalogue of griefs seemed to embrace 
almost the entire sweep of mortal expo- 
sures. 

His atoning death is not here brought 
into the account. Those were the sorrows 
of his life. That was the experience 
which arms his sympathy with such sus- 
taining strength for us. Through his 



212 UPWARD. 

own knowledge of the conflict he is able 
to succor the tempted. Our griefs are 
written with the pen of experience upon 
his heart. This is the companionship of 
the Angel of his Presence, walking hand 
in hand with us through every dark way 
in our pilgrimage, himself plucking the 
thorns from our flesh, and cheering us 
when ready to faint by telling how he 
overcame and sat down with the Father 
in his throne, and how we shall share in 
the same regal triumph when we over- 
come. 

The sorrows of life bring yet another 
consolation to those who are "exercised 
thereby." They deaden our unlawful 
ambitions, subdue our perversities and 
teach us to live more for heaven than 
for the world. They bring us face to face 
with those subjects of thought which en- 
large our admiration of the government 
of Grod, and thus they increase our holi- 
ness and exalt our joys. Under the ad- 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 213 

ministration of that government all par- 
ticular dispensations are woven into one 
comprehensive system of good and glory. 
Faith beholds in each of our trials a con- 
tribution toward the great purpose which 
must be consummated. By fastening our 
attention to these views, God leads our 
wills kindly along to submission to his 
general purpose. Self is lost in God. 

Self lost in God ! When this result is 
reached, his glory and our peace are in- 
separable. The last occasion for revolt 
from personal distress is removed. Our 
happiness is loosened from its anchorage 
to the selfish ground of personal pros- 
perity, and finds its moorings in the will 
of God. Holding fast there, we are 
above trouble. All our wishes concern- 
ing providential events come around to 
the one desire that God should reign. 
He will reign for ever ; and embarking 
our whole happiness in that truth, we 
shall be serene for ever. We may be for- 



214 UPWARD. 

saken, maligned, poor, disappointed in 
our personal ambition, broken in health, 
or robbed by unfeeling death of our 
dearest friends ; but what then ? These 
are the acts of the Divine administration, 
which we love better than we loved any 
lost good. It is " our Father at the 
helm," amid the fury of the winds and 
the surges of the ocean. God reigns, 
and what more do we w r ant ? 

Many of our allotments may be so dark 
that faith itself shrinks from the inquiry 
why these things are so. But even then, 
commensurate with the mystery of the 
dispensation will be the peacefulness of 
trusting our Saviour's word, " What I do 
thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know 
hereafter." As a schooling for the endow- 
ments of heaven, trust is often better than 
knowledge. We are often better and hap- 
pier for the necessity which resolves our 
carnal anxiety to know all into this sen- 
timent of unbounded confidence : " Even 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 215 

so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy 
sight." 

In holy trust there is one feature of 
sterling value which distinguishes the 
genuine from the false. The true is, 
throughout all the Christian's experience, 
an ever-living sentiment — the prevalent 
tone of his feelings toward the govern- 
ment of God. It is not a temporary ex- 
ercise, produced to meet some particular 
trial, enduring as long as the memory of 
the occasion lasts, and then laid to sleep 
until some new affliction summons it to 
reawaken. True submission surveys the 
whole field of God's dispensation toward 
ourselves; it looks at his past dealings 
which are known, and then at the un- 
known future; it contemplates the vicis- 
situdes to which we are yet exposed, as 
well as those which have been experi- 
enced, and acquiescing alike in all, it be- 
comes an abiding happy confidence that 
our heavenly Father not only hath done, 



216 . UPWARD. 

but will yet do, all things well. No re- 
conciliation of any narrower scope has 
power to bring forth pure peace. This 
alone is the art of deriving happiness 
from suffering the will of God. 

Submission to afflictions only at the 
times when they are felt is seldom any- 
thing better than the sullen patience of 
the philosopher, who says that since the 
calamity has occurred, and is beyond 
remedy, it may as well be peaceably en- 
dured. But a holy acquiescence in any 
past dealing of God leads to a similar 
trust in all which he is }^et to do with us. 
We then contemplate the most precious 
earthly comfort which still abides with 
us; we think of all the happiness which 
it has afforded, and of what we are still 
expecting from the enjoyment of it; and 
then, without one rebellious emotion, we 
submit that living comfort to the dispen- 
sation of Heaven, to be left or taken — 
"Not as I will, but as thou wilt." Thus 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 217 

accepting all dispensations to come in 
the same unrepining spirit which we feel 
toward past heavenly chastisements, we 
gain satisfying assurance that our resig- 
nation is the fruit of cordial attachment 
to the government of God. 

The power of the Divine Spirit must 
be invoked to work in the heart this 
abiding satisfaction with the whole will 
of God. But when it is once wrought, 
we are armed in advance for any possible 
trouble. Things to come as well as 
things present, "all are yours." We 
are alike supported now and girded for 
all future fights with affliction. When 
the. hour of calamity comes, the great 
battle with our wilful tempers is not to 
be fought. The question of pleasant sub- 
mission is already settled, and by that 
early settlement of matters between our- 
selves and the Divine administration we 
have deprived tribulation of its power 
over our peace. 

19 



218 UPWARD. 

In such a frame we are sure of the sup- 
port of Heaven in all our trials. Our 
hearts are open to the whole consolation 
which Christ brings to those who drink 
his cup and receive his baptism of sor- 
row. As the attractions of earth are loos- 
ened, those of heaven fasten themselves 
more firmly upon us. The " exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory" is a more 
beatific contemplation when it is placed 
in contrast with u our light affliction, 
which is but for a moment." Looking 
up from the vales of gloom, faith gains 
its best view of the light and glory which 
settles around the everlasting hills. 
Turning disappointed from the waters 
of Marah, which only mocked our thirst, 
how sweet to drink from the river of 
God! 

Exemption from the sorrows of life we 
no longer expect until we reach the im- 
mortal shore. The enjoyment of undis- 
turbed worldly bliss was no part of the 



THE SERVICE OF SUFFERING. 219 

terms under which we were admitted to 
discipleship. In the deed of the surren- 
der of ourselves to Christ w r e left those 
lines which should describe our earthly 
portion a blank for him to fill, and we ex- 
pected that many words of sorrow would 
be traced there. It is enough for us to 
know that all our corrections are with 
judgment, and not in anger, and that 
they are appointed by that Infinite Love 
who knows our frame and remembers 
that we are dust. The promise of sup- 
port is confirmed by all our experience 
of the past and by the history of the 
friends of God in every age. From the 
darkest of his ways the brightest illus- 
trations of his love have always shone. 
In all his dealings with his friends, bring- 
ing power to the faint, courage to the 
trembling and joy to the sorrowing, he 
affords us the assurance of the same 
grace in the same hour of need. The 
unbroken line of godly experience has 



220 UPWARD. 

strengthened the promise of ages gone, 
that "when the poor and needy seek 
water, and there is none, and their tongue 
faileth for thirst, I the Lord will hear 
them; I the God of Israel will not for- 
sake them." 




W^^: 




XVII. 

THE BORDER LAND. 

FIRST — REASSURANCE. 

v 

If N" the peace which Jesus sheds upon 
I the living pilgrim's path we have seen 
his u beauty why we should desire 
him." We have found in his consolations 
this wondrous adaptation, distinguishing 
them from all helps which this world 
offers, that they are nearest at hand 
when other supports are most treacherous. 
Thus we have learned to characterize 
them as " grace to help in time of need." 
Then can we so enthrone faith as to trust 
our Redeemer to the last? An event is ap- 
proaching which to us is untried — a scene 
whose terrors for the human nature are un- 
precedented in all our past experience of 
19 * 221 



222 UPWARD. 

the glooms of life. Will it not contain too 
many elements of dismay to allow us to 
maintain our serenity, even at the com- 
mand of the Prince of Peace? These are 
becoming inquiries for the thoughtful soul, 
conscious of drawing near the line which 
divides this from the world of spirits. 
Will the grace which has sustained us in 
the trials of life be an adequate support 
in the darker hour of death ? If we have 
sometimes been wearied in the race with 
the footmen, how will we contend with 
the horses? If frequently appalled in 
the land of peace, how will we do in the 
swellings of Jordan ? 

Let the past speak. Has God ever 
failed to honor the faith of his friends? 
In every earthly vicissitude has not the 
experience of his grace been such as to 
inspire unbounded trust for the untried 
future? The supports which have thus 
far sustained our rugged pilgrimage, 
have they not so illustrated the Divine 



THE BORDER LAND. 223 

method of strength for the day that we 
involuntarily expect something better 
than all the past to close up our earthly 
experience of the comforts of Christ? 
The manner in which he has drawn most 
near when without him we should have 
been most desolate, does it not arm us 
with confidence that, in the final conflict, 
the everlasting supports will be firm and 
gentle beyond all we have hitherto felt? 

The soul listens for what God w T ill him- 
self speak. Inspired by the experience 
of the past, it expects to hear the best 
words of love for the darkest hour of 
nature. It turns to the recorded prom- 
ises, and lo! it is all written, just as 
might have been expected, for the friend 
of Jesus trembling on the shore of mor- 
tality : " Yea, though I walk through the 
valley of the shadow of death, I will fear 
no evil, for thou art with me ; thy rod and 
thy staff, they comfort me;" "We know 
that if our earthly house of this taber- 



224 UPWARD. 

nacle were dissolved, we have a building 
of God, an house not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens ;" " My flesh and 
my heart faileth, but God is the strength 
of my heart, and my portion for ever." 

We note the experience of those who 
have tested the sustaining power of grace 
to the end, and there again it is told as we 
should expect. " How now about that 
trust in the Lord, of which we have so 
often spoken?" was once inquired of an 
aged disciple on her dying bed. " Eighty 
years long," she replied, "my heavenly 
Father has borne me through every trial, 
and I am not afraid to trust him now." 
In the same community an old man rose in 
a public religious assembly, and said that 
for almost fifty years he had been striving 
to serve his Redeemer, and the comforts 
of the service had grown better and bet- 
ter all the time. The next week he was 
unexpectedly prostrated by disease, and 
informed that he must die. He was re- 



THE BORDER LAND. 225 

minded of his words just quoted, and 
asked what he thought of those comforts 
now. " Still better and better," he re- 
plied ; " Christ is all my support, but he 
is enough. I can truly say my cup run- 
neth over." Numerous examples of this 
highest power of sustaining grace in the 
utmost extremity confirm the trembling 
believer's faith. If we can but yield our 
souls to its influence, the bitterness of 
death is already past. We lose our 
dread of contemplating 

"The scene where Christians die — 
Where holy souls retire to rest." 

"The "trembling" and "lingering" 
notes drop out from the song, while the 
" hoping," " flying," and " bliss of dying," 
swell more joyous from the valley, the 
bank and the midst of the river, until 
they are absorbed in the celestial harmo- 
nies which sweep from the harps of gold. 

We do not however look for unifor- 



226 UPWARD. 

mity in the manifestations of this one 
spirit of overcoming faith. The t}^pe of 
Christian emotion varies in different 
minds during life ; and there is no magic 
in a dying bed to reduce all constitu- 
tional tempers to one cast. Different 
minds will experience differing operations 
of the faith which Jesus reserves for the 
dying hour of his friends, ranging from 
tranquillity to ecstasy, and there will be a 
similar variety in the outward expression 
of this faith. 

One is triumphant in death. The con- 
queror's sword is in his hand, and the vic- 
tor's shout on his lips. Leaning on Christ, 
he defies the powers of darkness. He is 
on the wing, and his spirit is already as 
tuneful as a seraph's. He is straitened 
for words to publish his joy, and he 
would gladly summon the universe to 
come and hear what God is doing for 
him. 

Another carries a feeling of self-abase- 



THE BOEDER LAND. 227 

ment to the last. The thought that he is 
just about to be for ever saved by grace 
arrays all his personal unworthiness once 
more before his view, and he only dares 
to say that, as an undeserving sinner, he 
dies trusting in Christ. 

The feelings of another are placid and 
his expressions are calm. His soul melts 
under a view of the great mercy of God. 
He has long been accustomed to obtain 
from the quiet visits of his Saviour's love 
more comfort than he has told of, and the 
present aspects of his experience are deep 
and gentle peace. There is little that is 
apparent to distinguish this hour from 
other seasons of life. He served God 
while living, and built his hope gradually 
but firmly on the cross of Christ. The 
great change through which he is passing 
is an event long familiar to his medita- 
tions. His work is done, and what re- 
mains for him in this world but to 
die? 



228 UPWARD. 

These are the " diversities of operations" 
of "the same Spirit," and "it is the same 
God which worketh all in all." Under 
all these exhibitions of confidence, wher- 
ever we see evidence of their genuineness, 
we recognize the repose of the soul under 
the shadow of dying faith. Christ is the 
rod and staff, comforting them all along 
their march through the valley of the 
shadow of death. The one voice which 
they all speak is, "What time I am 
afraid, I will trust in thee." 

The range from within which thoughts 
tributary to this peace may be gathered 
up is w r ide. The glory to be revealed 
breaks upon the eye on which the world 
is darkening in a rich variety of lights. 
There are exemptions and acquisitions, 
excellent losses and no less excellent 
gains, beauties of character and beati- 
tudes of state, all embraced in that which 
is the best and the pledge of them all — the 
covenant of everlasting love. These are 



THE BORDER LAND. 229 

the things which are hung like lamps of 
heaven all around the valley of the 
shadow of death. 

Among the elements of this peace, de- 
liverance from the anguish of the sinner's 
last hours holds no mean place. There is 
no light in the dying chamber where par- 
don has not been spoken and hope does 
not come. Death, viewed simply as an 
event in the course of nature, is fearful 
enough to all. But with the soul whose 
departure is hopeless of mercy all its 
natural solemnness is absorbed in the 
frightful expectation of meeting the 
Judge and hearing the final doom. Then 
thoughts of unforgiven sin crowd upon 
the conscience, and the frowns of an 
angry God come in vision before the 
dying sinner's eye. It would seem suffi- 
ciently dreadful to be forced to a sullen, 
reluctant and eternal parting from a world 
where all his affections are treasured, and 
beyond which he has not a single object 

20 



230 UPWARD. 

of love. But even the thought of what 
he is leaving is often forgotten in the 
wilder thought of whither he is going. 
The helpless debtor who has allowed an 
account to roll up against himself until 
he is afraid even to think how large it 
must be, looks appalled upon the sum- 
mons to a reckoning. So with the poor 
soul out of Christ and on the last inch 
of time; he has nothing but liabilities on 
the book of heaven, and now the day of 
settlement has come. The long disagree- 
ment between himself and Grod is hence- 
forth past reconciliation. For him the 
door of mercy, which is now closing, will 
open no more. 

But sad as this contemplation is, what 
glory it lends to the contrast! Justified 
in the atonement and secured by the in- 
tercession of the Redeemer, the believer 
dies under his Lord's reconciling grace. 
He is removed from the world in love, 
not in wrath. He knows that his Re- 



THE BORDER LAND. 231 

deemer liveth, and he expects to stand 
under the shelter of his advocacy when 
he appears before God. Sins, from the 
curse of which he has already obtained 
redemption, are not allowed to flit around 
his pillow and frighten him with dismal 
apprehensions. Death has not come to 
change him from one state of sinfulness 
to a lower depth of depravity, nor to re- 
move him from a world of hope to a 
realm of despair. All through his past 
pilgrim days the voice which first told 
him to be of good cheer, for his sins were 
forgiven, has remained in his soul like 
the lingering vibrations of some song of 
the skies. Now its echoes are filling, and 
they more than renew the transports 
which they first awoke. Where has 
language any terms for expressing the 
beauty of such a thought as this — he dies 
justified, adopted and sanctified, in peace 
with God! He is sustained by that which 
is even better than hope, for his Lord is 



232 UPWARD. 

there. It is the voice of the Messenger 
of the Covenant which says, "I am with 
you." He listens and knows The Pres- 
ence in his soul. 




XVIII. 

THE BORDER LAND. 
SECOND — THE GLOOM AND THE LIGHT. 

fHE awfulness of death, viewed only 
as a natural occurrence, has been 
J mentioned. Let us retouch those 
sombre shades, that they may give vivid- 
ness to the contrast when the covenant 
of Christ is exhibited as a sanctuary from 
the carnal dread of dying. 

Independent of all moral considera- 
tions, gloom gathers around the subject 
of death. It is regarded as the crowning 
calamity of human existence — -that which 
men take most care to avoid and expect 
with most dread. " All that a man hath 
will he give for his life." As a figure, 
death is often employed to afford the 

20 • 233 



234 UPWARD. 

most terrible impression of objects. When 
we say of any allotment, that it is bitter 
as death, or of any human passion, that 
it is cruel as the grave, we mean to make 
the darkest representation of it which 
words will afford. 

These gloomy view T s of death approach 
every mind. The friends of Christ are 
often slow in rising above them. They 
are not strictly afraid to die ; that is, 
they have no tormenting dread of the 
event. They expect their Redeemer to 
be with them, and they look for peace 
from his presence. But the involuntary 
recoil of nature often lingers, like the 
muscular tremblings of a healed patient, 
not as the sign of present disease, but the 
token of its past severity. We " start at 
death's alarms," and we should probably 
be agitated by the unexpected intelligence 
that we have not another day to live. 

Among these natural glooms of death 
faith does its reassuring work as truly as 



THE BORDER LAND. 235 

when dealing with its moral terrors. 
Trust in the covenant is the sanctuary 
whose portals shut the Christian in and 
the dreads without. 

One of the dark aspects of death, when 
viewed from the stand-point of human 
nature, is the separation of the dying 
from all that is dear to them on earth. 
Things and friends who have been objects 
of familiarity and fondness are now to 
be lost in the darkness of earth. We 
leave them all ; mere earthly love is no 
more. The parting scene is solemn and 
affecting. It is an hour when the nat- 
ural affections are awakened to the most 
excessive tenderness of which they are 
susceptible ; and the one who is passing 
away often shares their intensity with 
those w r ho are weeping around his bed. 
The sorrow of sundering natural ties is 
inseparable from natural love, and there 
is nothing derogatory to the character of 
piety in a falling tear and parting pang, 



236 UPWARD. 

which betray that something is sacrificed 
for the final gain of everything. God 
never intended that holy affections should 
make us cold to the natural attachments 
of life. Our Lord and Master, Jesus 
himself, wept true human tears at the 
grave of his friend. Far from us be that 
religion which would turn our humanity 
into stone ! 

But the past experiences of grace have 
all along prepared the dying Christian 
for these painful separations. The objects 
of his holy affections have gradually mul- 
tiplied, and he has been inspired with a 
growing love for the employments, the 
company, the Saviour and the King of 
heaven, until it has become with him a 
settled state of feeling that, good as it 
'might seem to remain for the comfort of 
friends, it will be infinitely better to de- 
part and be with Christ. God has wrought 
within him the habit of keeping a loose 
hold of present delights, and taught him 



THE BORDER LAND. 237 

to live more upon such abiding joys as 
he can carry with him, than upon the 
pleasures which can go no farther than 
earth. In such ways he has forearmed 
his friends against any overwhelming 
sorrow, when the hour of parting comes. 
They lose only what they expected to 
leave when the soul should stretch her 
wings for her passage to the skies. What 
was really unworthy of their love they 
have learned to disregard. What was 
w r orthy of their attachment, but was 
only adapted to their comfort as pass- 
ing travelers, is easily exchanged for 
the superior delights of their abiding 
home. 

The friend of God, feeling that his eyes 
are about to close upon the world for ever, 
may ask to be carried to the window of 
his chamber. There he may look out for 
the last time upon the rising sun, the 
glowing sky, the green wood and sprightly 
brook where he has had so many pleasant 



238 UPWARD. 

rambles, and the arbor around which his 
own hands taught the vine to entwine 
itself in so tasteful beauty. What if a 
shadow does cross his brow, at the thought 
that he is to look upon these delightful 
things of God no more? It is but a 
shadow, and that for a moment only, for 
the eternal sun is rising, and faith even 
now is gazing upon skies which are never 
darkened. He forsakes the strolls of 
earth to walk along the river clear as 
crystal, shaded by the tree of life. There 
can be no disturbing sorrow r in the 
change, when the same breath which bids 
the world farewell welcomes heaven. 

So much of the affection between the 
dying believer and the friends from whom 
he parts as has been sanctified by their 
mutual love of Christ, will remain un- 
broken. Love which has been refined by 
grace is immortal. There is no reason 
to suppose that death ever suspends the . 
attachment of the glorified spirit for the 



THE BORDER LAND. 239 

pious friends whom he has left in the 
world. 

The Christian reader can now fix his 
thoughts upon some former companions 
of his pilgrimage who have outstripped 
him in the heavenly race, and are at 
home with Christ. They w T ere dear — 
God only knows how dear! — while you 
walked together below. Their love for 
you was never warmer and purer than at 
the moment when they rejoiced to leave 
your immediate society for that of heaven. 
You know their departure has not changed 
your affection for them, and can you sup- 
pose it has weaned them from you? Sub- 
ordinate to the place which God occupies, 
the bereaved Christian has in his heart 
a little altar where his glorified friend is 
enshrined; and the fire of that altar is 
fanned by the breath of many prayers 
for a blessed reunion where those who 
meet part no more. And why should we 
suppose that any holy fondness has been 



240 UPWARD. 

extinguished in the hearts of those who 
are now among the spirits of the just, 
because they have exchanged this chilly 
abode for that world where, 

"Kept by a Father's hand, 
Love cannot die?" 

God's word makes it certain that heaven 
is a scene of the holiest and happiest 
social attachments. All the fondness 
which on earth was really worthy of nour- 
ishment is there preserved and purified; 
and there the range of affections is en- 
larged by the soul's coming into inti- 
macy with new and nobler objects of re- 
gard. 

With such visions opening, the part- 
ing trials at death lose their power over 
the peace of the dying Christian. The 
view of faith brightens in proportion as 
the film gathers over the outward eye. 
We shall see less and less of what we 
are leaving, while we have enlarging 
views of the compensating gains. What 



THE BORDER LAND. 241 

were the losses of earth to the Christian 
martyrs who, "full of the Holy Ghost, 
looked up steadfastly into heaven, and 
saw the glory of God and Jesus standing 
on the right hand of God." "Farewell," 
said a noble Roman of the Imperial age, 
departing from the world — "farewell, oh 
farewell, all earthly things! and welcome 
heaven! From this time let none speak 
of earthly things to me!" For one who 
in this spirit is plumed for the upward 
flight, what are the pangs of departing 
farewells? 

While the Christian is in the border 
land, faith comes to his aid against 
another of the natural glooms of death — 
the dread of the unknown beyond. 

Into this darkness Divine grace alone 
can shine. Philosophy has no light to 
penetrate it. The wisdom of man has 
neither explored that mysterious thing 
which we call death, nor looked with any 
rational views upon its probable issues 

21 Q 



242 UPWARD. 

beyond our present sight. To one who 
rejects the knowledge which God has im- 
parted on the subject, it always appears 
as it did to the unbeliever, Hobbes, who 
in his last moments said, with horror, "I 
am taking a fearful leap in the dark!" 

In the mind of Columbus and his in- 
trepid fellow-mariners, embarking for the 
search of a western world, there must have 
been a solemn excitement in the thought 
that they were spreading their sails for 
unknown seas, from whence no voyager 
had returned with tidings. Still, in their 
case, the excitement of hope prevailed 
over that of dread. They hoped, at some 
distant day, to revisit the land and friends 
from whom they parted, and to astound 
Europe with tidings from a hitherto un- 
discovered realm of the globe. 

But no gallant ship returns to the shores 
of Time. Millions have sailed away, 
millions more are now casting off from 
their earthly moorings ; but not one has 



THE BORDER LAND. 243 

returned. No human gaze follows their 
track, to see what seas they ride or be- 
neath what billows they sink — what 
worlds they reach or what eternal wan- 
derings they pursue. The gloom of con- 
templating this voyage is oppressive. 

The mystery of death is itself terrible. 
That thing death — what does it mean? 
What is it to die ? What makes the dis- 
tinction between the living and the life- 
less state ? What is that peculiar sensa- 
tion which men call the pang of parting- 
life ? There are none to tell us ; the lips 
from which alone we could learn are all 
mute. 

But there is a still deeper dread of the 
unexplored^ mysteries beyond. Those 
who reject the lights and supports of the 
gospel of Christ often feel their souls 
tossed widely by the alternations of de- 
sire and repulsion — a strange conflict be- 
tween longing to know and shrinking from 
learning. In a quiet country cemetery 



244 UPWARD. 

in one of ojur old States, lie the remains 
of two men, neighbors in life, and both 
of them professed disbelievers in Divine 
revelation. While they were both alive 
they entered into the strange covenant 
that the one who first left the world 
should, if he found any future state of 
being, return if possible and inform the 
other respecting it. One died and was 
buried. The survivor, as long as he 
lived, avoided passing that graveyard in 
the dark. To his dying day he shrank 
affrighted at the thought of the bargained 
visit from the world of spirits. Well, 
those men know it all now. But on this 
side of the boundary all to human sense 
is as dark as ever. 

While, under the other mortal terrors, 
the love of Christ is the all-sufficient sup- 
port, this gloom is effectually dispersed 
by the Light of God. Faith sits down in 
the school of Divine inspiration. There, 
under the teachings of Heaven, that which 



X 

THE BORDER LAND. 245 

was mystery becomes the best of all 
knowledge — revealed truth. Ignorance 
of the nature of death, or of the destiny 
which it opens, then ceases to be an ele- 
ment of the dread of dying. Faith in- 
spires the believer with such assurance 
of the word of God that he adopts what- 
ever the Holy Spirit teaches as known 
truth. Enlightened by this " evidence of 
things not seen," he rests from his dread 
of the unknown, for with this light in his 
soul what unknown is there to dread? 
He asks, What is it to die ? and the an- 
swer is brought by that " earnest of the 
Spirit" by which Paul was taught, when 
he described it as simply the dissolving 
of this earthly house of our tabernacle. 
We do not die. That which has been 
well termed the mud-walled cottage in 
which we live, goes to ruin under the law 
of nature which assigns to all physical 
structures the periods of growth, matu- 
rity and decline. We are immortal. 

21 * 



246 UPWARD. 

The Christian again asks respecting 
what lies beyond. The same " earnest of 
the Spirit" speaks to him of the home 
provided for himself when the earthly 
tabernacle is dissolved — "We have a 
building of God, an house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens." He is 
not to be " unclothed, but clothed upon, 
that mortality might be swallowed up of 
life." From the lips of Christ a like 
view of what awaits his dying friends is 
conveyed under the same pleasant figure 
of a house — an immortal home: " In my 
Father's house are many mansions ; if it 
were not so, I would have told vou : I 20 
to prepare a place for you. And if I go 
to prepare a place for you, I will come 
again and receive you unto myself, that 
w T here I am there ye may be also." 

For the soul thus illuminated no pain- 
ful obscurity clouds the subject of death. 
The satisfied heart looks across all the in- 
tervening space to the " building of God," 



THE BORDER LAND. 247 

the house and home where Christ is and 
we shall be also ; and with so much in 
view that is clear, it is willing to rest 
from further explorings until called to 
pursue them in worlds of light. 

Much reason, it is true, remains for say- 
ing, "It doth not yet appear what we 
shall be ;" still the departing saint feels all 
his solicitude calmed while he does " know 
that when He shall appear, we shall be 
like him, for we shall see him as he is." He 
knows enough to assure him that he will 
enjoy unspeakable gain in the change from 
the mortal to the immortal state. He 
knows also that this transition is an object 
of the complacency of his heavenly Father, 
for again the Spirit says, " Precious in the 
sight of the Lord is the death of his 
saints." Thus fleeing to the sanctuary 
of Christian faith, he finds sweet repose 
from the fearful thought of launching out 
on unknown seas or wandering in " un- 
discovered bourns." 



XIX. 

THE BORDER LAND. 
THIRD THE COVENANT SLUMBER. 

fHERE remains for notice one more 
of the natural terrors of death — the 
j gloom of the grave. 
It is a cold, dark abode, where corrup- 
tion is our father and the worm our 
mother and sister. There is a universal 
shrinking of human nature from this 
destiny. Here we rejoice in the light 
and warmth of heaven, but there all is cold 
night upon which our sun never rises. 
We delight in the social communings of 
earth, but there we shall lie alone. JNTo 
cheering word of friendship enters the 
" dull, cold ear of death." The most en- 
deared earthly friends may be buried in 

248 



THE BORDER LAND. 249 

the same coffin, still the dead are all 
alone. The sepulchre can never become 
social. 

" Silence and solitude and gloom 
In those forgetful realms appear." 

Physical systems which are now rich in 
the strength and activity of life must 
there lie in long paralysis. Forms which 
are now beautiful will become a sightless 
mass of corruption, which the grave in 
mercy hides from the eye of the living. 

Is Christian faith an overmatch for 
the dread which the carnal sense feels at 
the approach of such a doom ? Yes, and 
more : it brings out from this very doom 
the highest personal triumph which the 
cross gives to the believer. Here, per- 
haps more than anywhere else, religion is 
true to its own nature — that is, most avail- 
able at the time of greatest need. The 
gospel writes its richest words upon the 
walls of the tomb. Its crowning conquest 
is victory over the grave. 



250 UPWARD. 

The heart of the thoughtful friend of 
Christ has often lingered lovingly over 
the phrase, sleeping in Jesus — " Them 
also which sleep in Jesus will Grod bring 
with him." In this figure there is some- 
thing which speaks the practical sympa- 
thy of Christ in the darkest of our allot- 
ments. Let this be marked well : it is a 
sympathy which is felt not alone in the 
cold passage over the river, but one that 
still abides with the flesh which the life has 
deserted. In the language of our creed, 
" He was crucified, dead and buried." In 
taking his part in all our trials, he 

"Passed through the grave, and blessed the bed." 

But even this does not reach the true 
idea of sleeping in Jesus. Nothing short 
of an evangelical view of the provisions 
of the eternal covenant of redemption will 
disclose the blessedness which dwells in 
those touchingly simple words. Christ 
with his own blood purchased his redeemed 



THE BORDER LAND. 251 

ones. The Father, under covenant prom- 
ise, gave them to him as the reward of his 
expiatory death. Their perfect redemption 
from all the dominion of sin is to become 
the highest power of his cross and the 
basis of his greatest mediatorial glory, 
Nothing of the redeemed man, nothing of 
the Redeemer's purchased possession, must 
remain an eternal monument of the power 
of sin and death. 

Here the glorious truth of the Resur- 
bectiox bursts upon the vision of faith. 
The voice of promise and summons to 
the Church is heard from the Lord of 
the purchased bodies and souls of his 
people: " Thy dead men shall live; to- 
gether with my dead body shall they 
arise : awake and sing, ye that dwell in 
dust ! for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, 
and the earth shall cast out the dead." 

Here the Redeemer's interest in the 
dying body is found to be the same as in 
the undying soul. They are alike parts of 



252 UPWARD. 

his covenant property. He received no 
fractional part of the believer's nature, 
but that believer is given to him as a 
whole man, and in that whole Jesus is 
to be admired in the final triumphal glory 
of liis cross. He has then the same cause 
for a jealous care of the body as for the 
soul. To himself, as well as to the un- 
worthy subject of his grace, the protec- 
tion and final glorifying of the whole 
man is an object of inexpressible interest. * 
The same omniscient love which, during 
the intermediate state, guards the disem- 
bodied spirit, will keep its post of vigil 
where the flesh is reposing beyond the 
reach of weariness and sin. In the grave, 
or down in the coral chambers of the 
ocean, or unburied on some desert wild, 
this flesh may moulder until every vestige 
of human form shall disappear : still it 
remains an essential covenant possession 
of Christ, which he has perfect power 
and perfect purpose to keep. It sleeps 



THE BOEDER LAND. 253 

in the covenant, and that is sleeping in 
Jesus. 

What mournings the corruption of the 
outward nature is ever bringing upon the 
children of God! What wrestlings of 
spirit with these bodies, the mediums 
of depraved inclination and instru- 
ments of sin ! How the Christian has 
longed for the wings of a dove, that he 
might fly away and be at rest ! Brought 
forth from the grave, all this will be to 
him " the former things which are passed 
away." Then the Redeemer is to present 
his people unblemished — " a glorious 
Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any 
such thing." The grave is to be made to 
the body the instrument of purification, 
removing its grossness and preparing it 
for the reunion with the spirit — a restored 
being with angelic attainments. 

Expecting this refining process through 

death and the grave, should we any longer 

shrink from abandoning this flesh to cor- 
22 



254 UPWARD. 

ruption ? At present we trace many of 
our sins and sorrows to its w T ants and its 
yearnings for evil. God forbid that we 
should ever carry such earthly wants and 
corrupt tendencies to heaven ! The grave 
will hide them for ever, while the 
" Watcher and Holy One" brings forth, 
in his own time, the pure form like his 
own risen body. How sublime the de- 
scription from the pen of the writer to 
the Corinthians — from corruption to in- 
corruption, from dishonor to glory, from 
weakness to power, from an animal to a 
spiritual body ! Spirit of God ! inspire 
us also with the assured hope of such a 
resurrection, and we will cease to -look 
into the grave as a dark dungeon where 
the tyrant Sin holds his sullen ward. 
With Paul we will stand over the tomb 
and extol the triumph of grace: "0 
Death ! where is thy sting ? Grave ! 
where is thy victory?" 

In the heart of one who has been the 



THE BORDER LAND. 255 

subject of an earnest Christian experience 
this hope is too well inwrought to be dis- 
turbed by the cavils of human wisdom. 
The comforts of the doctrine of the res- 
urrection were not first suggested by the 
science of this world, and they are not to 
be darkened by the philosophy of men. 
The truth belongs entirely to another de- 
partment of knowledge — the revealed 
wisdom of God. Vain sophists may 
array their physiological theories against 
our hopes ; they may talk about the same 
atoms changing from body to body ; they 
may palter about the question whether 
the preservation of the particles of mat- 
ter in the human system is essential to 
the identity of the body itself; they may 
go farther and commit blasphemy by 
denying the power of God to reproduce 
forms after the utter ruin of organic 
structure, so that the thing formed shall 
be, not another being, but the same man 
who once before lived : it is enough for us 



256 UPWARD. 

that, as we first accepted these hopes from 
God, we rely upon his truth and power to 
accomplish what he has said. 

More than this, we throw into the face 
of skeptical philosophy its own voidness 
of reason when it perpetrates the absur- 
dity of bringing mere human science to 
sit in judgment upon truths which belong 
only to the Infinite Mind. It is blind to 
one of the most obvious distinctions in 
sound reasoning, when it can see no dif- 
ference between contrary to reason and 
above reason, and so sets down everything 
w 7 hich is beyond its own grasp as un- 
philosophical. 

When we do see that with the same 
ashy dust, acted upon alike by the second 
causes of moisture, warmth, and light, 
God disposes some particles into the form 
and tint of the rose, others into the modest 
violet or gorgeous magnolia, and still 
others into the golden fruits of summer, 
giving to each of these such a body as 



THE BORDER LAND. 257 

pleases himself, we find no difficulty in 
believing his power to w T ork his own 
pleasure with the mouldered remains of 
the human form. In neither case do we 
understand the process. But in one 
instance we witness the result, and 
the result is all that concerns us in 
the other. The truth of his covenant 
is the point that is settled in our hearts, 
and reposing in the trust that we shall 
awake in the likeness of Christ, the grave 
is gloomy no longer. 

11 On the cold cheek of death smiles and roses are blending, 
And beauty immortal awakes from the tomb." 

In our fiesli we shall see God. Our eyes, 
and not those of another shall behold 
him. 

These, together with those suggested in 
preceding articles, are the supports under 
which the friend of Christ dies. The 
moral terrors of death are overcome by 
forgiving grace and justifying faith. Its 
natural glooms have undergone the al- 

22 * R 



258 UPWARD. 

chemy of the cross, transmuting each 
thing of clreacl into an element of tri- 
umph. All is then clear. The Chris- 
tian's departure is not alone an occasion 
for pious submission: it should be an 
event of real joy. 

So it has been felt by men of God, in- 
spired and uninspired. Look at Paul: 
"To me, to live is Christ, and to die is 
gain;" "Death is swallowed up in vic- 
tory;" "Willing rather to be absent 
from the body, and to be present with 
the Lord." Such experiences of holy 
men abound on the records of the Divine 
Word. The Psalmist of Israel has be- 
fore been quoted: "Though I walk 
through the valley of the shadow of 
death, I will fear no evil, for thou art 
with me; thy rod and thy staff, they 
comfort me." Many of that day went 
up in spirit, as Elijah did visibly, amid 
the parting skies, in a chariot of fire. 
And so they have done since, and will 



THE BORDER LAND. 259 

continue to do, until "thy people pass 
over, Lord! till the people pass over 
which thou hast purchased." 

From the ranks of the learned and the 
unlearned, the lowly and the illustrious, 
examples almost without limit come forth 
to strengthen our trust. Here is the poor 
mutilated English sailor, of whom Dr. 
Griffin, of Portsea, wrote. "Come in," 
said he, as his minister entered the room, 
"come in, thou man of God! I have 
been longing to tell you the happy state 
of my mind. I shall soon die, but death 
has now no terrors. I am going to heaven. 
Oh what has Jesus clone for me, one of 
the vilest of the human race! The joy 
I feel from the sense of the love of God 
to sinners, and the thought of being with 
the Saviour, are more than I can express. 
Hallelujah! hallelujah!" 

We go to the dying bed of Dr. Finley, 
former President of the College of STew 
Jersey. "I know not," said he, "in what 



260 UPWARD. 

language to speak of my own un worthi- 
ness. I have been undutiful. ... I can 
truly say that I have loved the service of 
God. I have honestly endeavored to act 
for God, but with much weakness and 
corruption. ... Oh that each of you 
may experience what, blessed be God, I 
do, when you come to die ! . . . Eternal 
rest is at hand; the Lord hath given me 
victory; I exult! I triumph!" 

Most of the readers of Christian biog- 
raphy are familiar with the dying ex- 
perience of that young servant of Christ, 
James Brainerd Taylor. "Heaven," he 
said, " never appeared more desirable. I 
have longed to see the King in his beauty. 
Never did I gain so near an access to 
God. Dying seems like going to my 
Father's house. ... I have longed, 
longed, to enter heaven. . . . My active 
spirit, which now clings to Jesus, will be 
adoring, active, and wondering among 
the spirits of the just made perfect. . . . 



THE BORDER LAND. 261 

It is but a little way from this to yonder 
mansion.^. . . How sweet the earnest! 
Only a little while, and we shall be there.'' 
Room for examples fails. From such 
dying chambers visions of glory blaze. 
As we gaze on them, we seem to go up 
"from the plains of Moab unto the moun- 
tain of Nebo, to the top of Pisgah," and 
look out upon the scene beyond. We 
cannot more appropriately close our con- 
templations of this side of the river than 
here in sight of Canaan. 














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XX. 

HEAVEN. 

FIRST — THINGS WHICH EYE HATH NOT SEEN NOR 
EAR HEARD. 

fHE astronomer, attempting to explore 
remote worlds, is obliged to take his 
j standpoint of observation on this 
earth. He cannot carry his instruments 
into the field of discovery, and there 
measure celestial magnitudes or bring to 
light the wonders of those distant crea- 
tions. What he observes by looking 
across the long interval must suffice, for 
he can learn no more. 

Thus, for a little while, we are circum- 
scribed in our views of heaven. It is a 
distant land, which the foot of none liv- 

262 



HEAVEN. 263 

ing on earth has trodden. Its scenes are 
without the range of sense, and its glory 
surpasses the power of human compre- 
hension. Here we can neither survey it 
with the eyes of glorified spirits nor 
speak of it in the language of the skies. 
One who enjoyed a supernatural view of 
that world gave only this shorn account 
of his beatific vision, that there he "heard 
unspeakable words which it is not lawful 
[possible] for a man to utter." We are 
indebted to our faith for so much account 
as God has sent across from thence to this 
dim-sighted world, for all our heavenly 
discoveries this side of death. 

And these discoveries are sufficient 
now. Even through this dark glass men 
have seen what has filled them with as 
much rapture as a mortal man knows 
how to bear. The last words of John 
Welch, one of the champions of Scotch 
Protestantism, uttered under overpower- 
ing manifestations of the Divine glory, 



264 UPWARD. 

were,- "It is enough, Lord — it is now 
enough! Hold thy hand! Thy servant 
is a clay vessel, and can hold no more." 
As much of peace and joy as our present 
natures can receive from the contempla- 
tion of that world is now within our 
reach. Like the group sketched by the 
sanctified fancy of Bunyan, we may now 
stand on the Delectable Mountains, and 
through the glass of faith look over to the 
Celestial City for which we are girded 
pilgrims, and where our pilgrimage will 
soon end. It does not impair the bliss 
of our anticipations to reflect that "it 
doth not yet appear what we shall be," 
for we shall know all when our souls are 
great enough to enjoy all. 

In what lovely imagery the Divine 
revelation has clothed heavenly realities, 
so as to bring them as near as possible to 
our weak senses ! The things which God 
hath prepared for them that love him, 
have never found a human language in 



HEAVEN. 265 

which their living majesty can be written. 
This may be the reason why the Holy 
Spirit, in describing them, has so often 
used those pictured terms which, through 
our quick sense of external beauties, find 
their way to our hearts. 

Thus the holy city, the New Jerusalem, 
is represented " coming down from God 
out of heaven, prepared as a bride 
adorned for her husband." The original 
paradise of our first parents fills all our 
ideas of outward pleasantness and ex- 
quisite natural enjoyments. The Spirit 
seizes upon this glowing ideal when it 
represents .heaven as the " Paradise of 
God." It is also the " Tabernacle of God 
with men." There is "the Fountain of 
the Water of Life," and the feast which 
is there spread is "the Marriage Supper 
of the Lamb." In those regions there 
are no alternations of day and night, no 
rising and setting sun or feebler lights 
of evening. "The glory of God did 

23 



266 UPWARD. 

lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
thereof." Exhibited under the figure of 
a city walled with jasper, built s of pure 
gold like unto glass, its foundations gar- 
nished with all manner of precious stones, 
the view of heaven fills all our concep- 
tions of gorgeousness and outward loveli- 
ness. It seems as though the Spirit of 
inspiration had exhausted the splendors 
of the natural world in searching out 
emblems of the glory of the "city which 
hath foundations, whose Builder and 
Maker is God." 

But the Holy Scriptures have plain 
writings, as well as charming pictures, 
of the scenes of everlasting rest. The 
Divine word affords many more descrip- 
tions of the glory to be revealed, and we 
repose upon promises which we believe 
will have a literal fulfillment. If we 
dwell in the golden city or walk the bank 
of the crystal river only in a figure, we shall 
literally be with Christ where he is. If 



HEAVEN. 267 

we are not strictly arrayed in white robes, 
we shall truly possess the purity of which 
they are the emblems. Shining figures 
of speech can here promote no extrav- 
agant views. There is enough literal de- 
scription to show that they are as far 
short of the reality as terrestrial things 
are beneath the celestial. 

To the believer every thought of the 
world of bliss is delightful. In every 
condition this side of heaven the comforts 
of religion seem to fight their way to 
our souls against counteracting glooms. 
Earthly dispensations all have a dark as 
well as bright side, and the reflections 
which support our courage and console 
our hearts reach us only as, in the mili- 
tary sense of the word, they overcome the 
gloomy views which our condition sug- 
gests. But looking beyond the sins, toils 
and sorrows of life, we are out of the 
reach of all dark thoughts. We can 
never indulge one unpleasant view of 



268 UPWARD. 

heaven, or feel one shrinking revolt from 
the approach of its bliss. Every condition 
of life from which suffering is expected 
is left behind when Ave step within the 
veil. All that can inspire gloomy for- 
bodings belongs to the former things 
which are passed away. Distant as our 
present point of observation is, we can 
nevertheless see that no clouds float in 
those skies and the sun of that everlast- 
ing day is never obscured. 

God has* not only prepared these things 
for those that love him, but he has also 
prepared them for this bliss. When we 
find ourselves capable of deriving happi- 
ness from such prospects, we recognize 
the forming work of the Divine Spirit on 
our hearts, and we know that God has 
wrought us for this selfsame thing. 
Throughout the whole range of heavenly 
enjoyments there is nothing to excite one 
yearning of the carnal mind. In the 
possessor of such a mind the wish to 



HEAVEN. 269 

ascend to heaven when he dies is 
prompted only by the unwelcome cer- 
tainty that he must leave this world, and 
his dread of a worse doom, beyond the 
grave. Earth would be his supreme 
good if he might retain it. He has no 
heart for the songs of angels, the commu- 
nion of the redeemed and the smile of 
God. Compared with present delights, 
the themes of that world are insipid, its 
associations dull and its employments 
irksome. This shows how much is im- 
plied when we speak of want of prepara- 
tion for heaven. 

But the believer's earnest delight in the 
prospect of the heaven which God de- 
scribes, magnifies the inworking power 
of Divine grace. God has taken in hand 
the work of revolutionizing his heart, im- 
parting to him such susceptibilities and 
aspirations as fit him not merely to reach 
that world, but to enjoy it. Turning 
wearily from a world of sin, he can sym- 

. 23 * 



270 UPWARD. 

pathize in the sentiment which forms the 
last record in the diary of Henry Martyn 
— " Oh when shall time give place to eter- 
nity? When shall appear that new 
heaven and new earth wherein dwelleth 
righteousness ? There, there shall in no 
wise enter in anything that defileth. None 
of that wickedness which has made men 
worse than wild beasts, none of those 
corruptions which add still more to the 
miseries of mortality, shall be seen or 
heard of any more." Before the soul in 
which the Holy Spirit has wrought such 
views of what is wearisome on the one 
hand or refreshing on the other, heaven 
glows as the object of sweet thoughts and 
burning hopes. Weary and heavy laden, 
it approaches that world for rest. 

Yes, for rest. " There remaineth there- 
fore a rest to the people of God." The 
calamities of life are past. Not only is "a 
world of joy reached, but a world of sor- 
row is forsaken. For that region of end- 



HEAVEN. 271 

less life the pilgrim has exchanged a 
realm of death. Here we ride an ocean, 
always stormy and often lashed by the 
tempest into fury : there, we are told, 
there is no more sea. Here, we struggle 
with poverty, waste under diseases and 
" mourn departed friends." Common 
consent has named our present abode a 
vale of tears. The weak are oppressed, 
the unfortunate are forsaken, the ambit- 
ious are disappointed, and " the whole 
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain 
together until now." There, "they shall 
hunger no more, neither thirst any more, 
neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
any heat. For the Lamb which is in the 
midst of the throne shall feed them, and 
shall lead them unto the living fountains 
of waters, and God shall wipe away all 
tears from their eyes." Sorrow, crying, 
pain and death are among " the former 
things which are passed away." None 
of their inhabitants sav, "lam sick;" 



272 UPWAED. 

no gloomy funeral processions pass along 
the streets, for the days of their mourn- 
ing are ended. "Neither can they die 
any more, for they are equal unto the 
angels, and are the children of God, 
being the children of the resurrection." 

But these are only exemptions from 
natural evils. There is a better repose 
than even this for the weary wrestler 
with depravity. A world of sin is ex- 
changed for a world of holiness. Here 
there is strife against inbred corruption 
and against wickedness all around. We 
are weary with the sight of human vile- 
ness on every hand, and we long also to 
possess for ourselves the perfect holiness 
of heaven. What a new world of enjoy- 
ment will be opened when we cease to 
witness the rage of human passions, to 
look on the oppressor trampling the poor 
in the dust, to hear the language of pro- 
fanity, to see the ordinances of Grod 
treated with derision, and to behold men 



HEAVEN. 273 

proud of their impiousness, glorying in 
their shame! What a new life when our 
own hearts are exalted above every selfish 
emotion, cleansed from all impure affec- 
tions, and secured in the undisturbed pos- 
session of the love of God! 

Heaven without trouble, sickness and 
death, would be a spiritual emptiness, 
were it not heaven without sin. It will 
be a thousand-fold reward for all the 
pains of death, if we may escape the 
presence of that which fills the world 
with dying groans. This terrible foe 
never invades the heavenly rest. " There 
shall in no wise enter into it anything 
that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh 
abomination or maketh a lie." "When 
He shall appear, w r e shall be like him, 
for we shall see him as he is." The 
moral character of every one around us 
will be conformed to the holiness of God. 
We shall be like them, and, with them, 
like Jesus, and pure as God is pure. 



274 UPWARD. 

The thought is at once triumphant and 
humbling. Who are we, and what is 
our' race, that such victory and award 
should await us? What an example of 
grace abounding over the deserts of sin! 
From the dust we raise our eyes to that 
glory. We feel that our nothingness is 
deep, according to the loftiness of our 
hope. 

But let no carnal notions of rest gather 
around the truth of the everlasting sab- 
batism that remains to the people of God. 
We connect with it no thought of cessa- 
tion of holv activities. We look also for 
such earnest and delightful mental em- 
ployments as give to the soul loftier con- 
ceptions of the great glory of God. We 
know not the range of subjects of inquiry, 
but we expect no deadening of the ambi- 
tion for knowledge and no slackening of 
the race of science. 

In the present world every new intel- 
lectual attainment imparts pleasure. Our 



HEAVEN. 275 

minds are formed for investigation. It 
lies in their nature to derive satisfaction 
from the discovery of truth in an endless 
variety of subjects. We wish to lay the 
universe under contribution to this pro- 
pensity, and are impatient under any re- 
striction of the field of inquiry. We 
wish to learn from the earth, the sea, the 
stars, the records of history, the labyrinths 
of lines and numbers, the wilds of meta- 
physics, the laws of moral government, and 
the principles of the throne of heaven. In 
short, wherever truth may be traced, we 
delight to search her footsteps and we 
triumph in every new discovery. 

This thirst for knowledge is not a car- 
nal propensity belonging to the earthly 
nature, and along with that nature to be 
shaken off in death. It is one of the 
signatures of the immortal nature — a 
divine instinct, imperishable as the 
soul's existence. Then who can doubt 
but these aspirations will be intensified 



276 UPWABD. 

when our sensual thraldom is all shaken 
off, and we are brought under circum- 
stances which at once incite and reward 
the search for truth? Wo expectation is 
more rational than that this will be our 
condition in heaven. The wonders of 
boundless worlds will probably be open 
to our view. And who can tell but 
sciences so exalted that their faintest 
light never dawned upon earth may 
then spread themselves before the mind 
that is enlarged to know infinite things? 
And what will become of our present dis- 
tinction of the mental from the moral 
when there is no philosophy of which 
God is not the heart — when he is felt in 
all and filling all? And will there be 
any partial application of the term " exact 
sciences" when all becomes more than 
mathematical certainty, every discovery' 
clear and every demonstration infallible? 
Under this flood of illumination the 
government of God will be vindicated 



HEAVEN. 277 

from the charge of disorder. Reasons 
will be apparent why everything should 
exist as it does; why the sparrow should 
fall or kingdoms hasten to their dissolu- 
tion; why the world should be cursed 
with sin or the Redeemer die to restore 
it from its revolt from God ; why Chris- 
tian lands should be enlightened, and the 
heathen left in darkness; why the re- 
deemed should be glorified and the re- 
probate left in eternal woe. Every event 
will be seen to have its exact place in a 
perfect system. We shall rest from the 
weariness of human disputes, the impa- 
tience of pursuing truth under so many 
disadvantages, and the trial of under- 
standing so little of the ways of God. 
That " Hereafter," when we are to know 
what Christ does, though we know not 
now, is then come. We look no more 
through the dark glass: we see face to 
face. We are done with this knowing in 
part: we know even as we are known. 

24 




XXI. 

H EA VEN. 
SECOND — THE EVERLASTING SABBATH. 

fE have ruled out from the Sabbath 
rest of heaven the sensual idea 
of inactivity. Whatever secures 
against weariness fulfills the import of 
the term. Gracious exercises are doubt- 
less one in substance on earth and in 
heaven. Here they find their healthiness 
and their joy in living and doing fpr Christ. 
How can we but suppose that a mere pas- 
sive reception of Divine comforts would 
be more felt as unnatural to the heavenly 
life in proportion as the soul's absorption 
in Grod is there more perfect? 

Every description which we have of 

278 



HEAVEN. 279 

the condition of the celestial company 
involves the idea of activity. And there 
is no reason to suppose this activity is 
restricted to a few forms of exercise. The 
glass through which we now look into 
that world is too dark to enable us to de- 
scribe the routine of duty through which 
we are to pass, but such leading views of 
the subject as we are able to take indicate 
the opening of a vast and varied field of 
holy effort. God has around him there a 
countless throng of agents to do his will. 
The number of them is "ten thousand 
times ten thousand, and thousands of 
thousands." The use of the instrumen- 
tality of created agents is, so far as w T e 
know, his chosen method of prosecuting 
his designs. His field of operation is a 
universe without limit. Over the whole 
of this field events in endless variety are 
to be carried forward through eternal 
duration. With these facts before us, we 
naturally expect to see him assigning to 



280 UPWARD. 

his servants a vast extent of duties, vari- 
ous in kind and noble in character. In 
this boundless field for the improvement 
of every talent and the employment of 
every power, we look for opportunity for 
the exercise of the energies of all. The 
subject is captivating, but it approaches 
too near the unsafe ground of human 
speculation to render it proper to theo- 
rize minutely. We may, however, rely 
upon one conclusion : if we are Christ's, 
we shall soon enter upon angelic employ- 
ments, and derive from our duties such 
joy as fills the heart of a seraph. 

Only a faint uncertainty clouds the idea 
that the glorified spirits of the departed 
are now ministering to the friends of 
Christ on earth. This delightful work is 
unquestionably performed by messengers 
sent from the realms of bliss. God has 
explicitly promised that his angels shall 
have charge over those who make him 
their refuge, to keep them in all their 



HEAVEN. 281 

ways. It was an angel that shut the 
mouths of the lions among whom his ser- 
vant Daniel was thrown. Angels carried 
Lazarus to the bosom of Abraham ; and 
the " little ones," whom we are warned 
not to despise, have angels who always 
-behold the face of God in heaven. In 
short, they are " all ministering spirits, 
sent forth to minister to them who shall 
be heirs of salvation." 

It is also beyond the reach of doubt 
that glorified spirits from this earth pos- 
sess angelic properties. Some of those 
who have departed have certainly re- 
visited the world, as angels are said to 
hold intercourse with earth.* Still, we 
have not sufficient light respecting the 
intermediate state between death and the 
resurrection to justify many positive con- 
clusions respecting the present employ- 
ment of the departed saints. The best of 
our knowledge concerning them, previous 

* See among the other examples, Matt. xvii. 3. 

24* 



282 upward. 

to the restoration of their bodies, is that 
they are present with the Lord, and in 
that presence there is fullness of joy. 

But their final employment in minis- 
tering to the glory of Grod is a point on 
which the Divine testimony is explicit. 
Whatever stations they may hold under 
the government of heaven, upon what- 
ever embassies they may be sent, or what- 
ever mutual offices of love may pass be- 
tween them, it is certain they will always 
have something to do which will give 
them the happy assurance that they are 
glorifying their Lord and Redeemer. 
They will for ever rejoice in the conscious- 
ness that they are making practical re- 
turns of gratitude for the mercy which 
they have received. Their voices are 
among those of many angels round about 
the throne, and the living ones, and the 
elders, whose number was ten thousand 
times ten thousand and thousands of 
thousands, and w r hose song heard in the 



HEAVEN. 283 

apocalyptic vision was, " Worthy is the 
Lamb that was slain to receive power 
and riches and wisdom and strength and 
honor and glory and blessing!" Their 
public presence in the final judgment will 
yield its revenue of honor to Christ, for 
he is then to be admired in all them that 
believe; and they will be for ever "a 
crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, 
and a royal diadem in the hand of God." 
Even in this world, life without some 
great worthy end is a scene of discontent, 
a bubble, a farce. Existence which is 
not expended on some sufficient object 
drags wearily along. So it would doubt- 
less be in heaven, and as much more so 
as the powers of activity are more quick- 
ened in the atmosphere of the world of 
life. Living and doing for God here en- 
nobles and intensifies life. Then how it 
exalts our anticipations of that world, 
which is all life, to think of it as still 
living and doing for God! 



284 UPWARD. 

Lifting our thoughts to another reach 
of celestial meditations, we find ourselves 
amid the associations of heaven. It is 
the everlasting Sabbath: let us look in 
upon the assembly to which we expect to 
join ourselves in the sanctuary of the 
Church universal. 

There Ave are communicants with all 
who, like ourselves, have been redeemed 
from the earth. While we loved Grod 
whom we had not seen we learned to 
love our brethren whom we had seen. 
The holy intimacies of life will there be 
renewed. Hearts which burned while 
fellow-believers talked along the way of 
their crucified Saviour, will experience 
rekindled ardor in together looking upon 
his exalted state. JNTo distrust will there 
enter to cool the affection of the brother- 
hood. No suspicions of doctrinal un- 
soundness and no carnal ambitions will 
divide the general assembly of the tri- 
umphant Church into rival sections. 



HEAVEN. 285 

There will be no separate communions, 
and no contention for forms and modes. 
The partition- walls will be broken down, 
and hearts will blend in the burning of 
such love as angels feel. 

The cord of caste will be broken, and 
national antipathies will be forgotten. 
The Barbarian and Scythian, the bond 
and free, the Hottentot and the child of 
civilization will together adore the won- 
ders of the mercy which raised them 
from the spiritual degradation where they 
alike lay, and will mingle their voices in 
one choral exaltation of Him who is, 
without respect of persons, the Father 
and Redeemer of them all. The watch- 
men will lift up the voice together, and 
the intercession of Christ that we may be 
one, as he and the Father are one, will re- 
ceive its fruition. The great and good 
of past ages, whose memory in the 
Church is like ointment poured forth, are 
all there. We shall sit down with Abra- 



286 UPWARD. 

ham, Isaac and Jacob, and the elders who 
obtained a good report — with saints of the 
New Testament, and glorious martyrs 
who have gone up in chariots of fire. All 
the Church, gone, living, and yet to live, 
will gather as one flock around the one 
Shepherd and Bishop of souls. 

Angels will also be our associates there. 
The lowliest Christian will be the com- 
panion of those sons of God whose joyous 
shouts heralded the morning hour of 
earth. Those who have ascended from 
the unnoticed corners of the world, ne- 
glected and scorned by men, will stand 
by the side of Gabriel in the palace of the 
Great King. What a scene for Christian 
anticipation — to unite in angelic worship 
— to come into eternal intimacy with the 
noblest and holiest beings below God! 

With the noblest and holiest beings 
below God — is that all? Nay, wondrous, 
wondrous grace! hope is taught to vault 
up to an infinity beyond this. We ex- 



HEAVEN. 287 

pect an eternal intimacy with the noblest 
and holiest of all — the Triune Father, 
Son and Holy Ghost. We shall sit down 
with Christ in his throne, and we shall be 
ever with the Lord. "They are before 
the throne of God, and serve him day 
and night in his temple, and he that 
sitteth on the throne shall dwell among 
them;" "The tabernacle of God is with 
men, and he will dwell with them, and 
they shall be his people, and God him- 
self shall be with them, and be their 
God." 

It seems too much, but the intercession 
of our Advocate makes it sure: "Father, 
/ will that they also whom thou hast 
given me be with me where I am, that 
they may behold my glory which thou 
hast given me." In this world our richest 
foretastes of heaven are the approaches, 
distant though they be, which we make 
toward God. This is the comfort of 
warm-hearted prayer — the drawing near 



288 UPWARD. 

to him in whose presence there is fullness 
of joy. Whatever brings the soul near 
to God purifies its character and exalts 
its happiness. What will it then be to 
stand before his throne or to sit down 
with Christ, no more a stranger, but in 
the household home of his family? 

" Think then," says Mr. Baxter, in his 
Dying Thoughts — " think, my soul, what 
life thou shalt live for ever, in the pres- 
ence and bosom of infinite and eternal 
Love ! He now shineth on me by the sun, 
and on my soul by the Sun of Righteous- 
ness, but it is as through the crevices of 
my darksome habitation ; but then he 
will shine on me and in me openly, and 
with the fullest streams and beams of 
love. Study this heavenly work of love, 
my soul ! It is only love that can un- 
derstand it. Here the will has its taste. 
What can poor carnal worldlings know 
of glorious love who studv it without 
love?" 



HEAVEN. 289 

These are the gatherings of heaven; 
this is the general assembly in the pres- 
ence of its Head. Forgiven sinners are 
brought with songs to Zion, and there 
they worship with the innumerable com- 
pany of angels. Jehovah is there, and 
there his glory is seen and felt as it shines 
in the face of Jesus. The joy of God is 
the joy of all, and the love which God is 
glows in every breast around. We have 
no human language for speaking of such 
fellowship, and no earthly things by 
which to illustrate it. This world is too 
poor to produce them. If the writer and 
reader may hereafter stand on the moun- 
tain of Zion, and together 

" Kange the sweet plains on the banks of the river, 
And sing of salvation for ever and ever," 

we shall discourse of our celestial associa- 
tions in terms befitting the theme. 

Finally — heaven is eternal. What 
Christian, in his transient and uncertain 

26 T 



290 UPWARD. 

hours of devotion, has not clung fondly 
to the thought that 

" There the assembly ne'er breaks up, 
The Sabbath ne'er shall end?" 

Our Sabbaths on earth come and depart. 
Their holy quiet is followed by a week of 
worldly turmoil. We would fain be still 
with God, but the demands of the world 
upon our care are imperative. From the 
solemn sanctuary we must pass to the 
noisy street; from our altars of heavenly 
communion we must turn to intercourse 
with the vain world ; from the mount of 
privilege we must descend to the cheerless 
deserts where few of the healing waters 
flow. We love the hours when we are 
allowed to put the world aside and dwell 
in undisturbed nearness to God, and we 
would gladly lay hold of the wheels of 
time and check the speed with w r hich 
they are borne away ; but they will go. 

To the soul, feeling that a day with 
God is better than a thousand with the 



HEAVEN. 291 

world, what bliss attends the reflection 
that the worship of the upper sanctuary 
is everlasting ! Rob the saints in glory 
of that prospect, and every song of heaven 
would be changed into a wail of anguish. 
Give them to understand that at some 
period — no matter though it be millions 
of years remote — their bliss will ter- 
minate and their existence end, and every 
mansion and bower of paradise would be 
hung with funeral drapery. But no such 
fear will ever disturb a heart there. 
Everything in heaven is immortal. Its 
exemptions, its employments, its society, 
its Redeemer and King are all eternal. 
Our inheritance is incorruptible, and 
never fades away : " They shall reign for 
ever and ever." 

What thoughts cluster around the 
word Eternity ! Under the present dark- 
ness of our minds the conception is almost 
oppressive. We measure duration by 
days and years, and even in imagination 



292 UPWARD. 

we can follow it no farther than our arith- 
metic will number its periods. Still away 
onward, far beyond the stretch of our com- 
putation or thought, eternity rolls on. 
Worlds faint in the race and expire. 
Planetary systems are worn out by the 
friction of ages of revolving, and are lost in 
the regions of space. Still away onward, 
Time, fresh as in the morning of creation, 
is girding himself for a race without a 
goal. 

Under such conceptions who can speak 
to creatures like ourselves, yet on earth, 
of eternal love, eternal holiness, eternal 
heaven ? When we reflect that so much 
peace, joy and glory is to become an 
eternal reward, it seems like pouring into 
a cup which is already running over. 
Description is soon exhausted, but our 
musings linger on the thought that we 
shall be ever with the Lord. Ever, ever 
with the Lord ! 

Child of the skies ! let thy spirit hasten 



HEAVEN. 293 

homeward. Tempests are gathering, and 
the nights of earth are dark and fearful. 
There " thy sun shall no more go down, 
neither shall thy moon withdraw itself; 
for the Lord shall be thine everlasting 
light, and the days of thy mourning sh^all 
be ended." 

25* 




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